Contextual questions prevent mood primes from maintaining experimentally induced dysphoria

We investigated the effects of questions designed to increase a wider awareness of the context in which moods occur on mood-maintaining primes in induced dysphoria. These questions were incorporated, with the primes (negative Velten mood induction statements) into a scrambled sentence task. In Study 1, contextual questions produced a significantly greater reduction in despondency compared to control questions. Study 2 replicated this finding and also demonstrated that contextual questions reduced corrugator EMG response to repeated despondency-inducing statements. The results indicate that contextual questions can prevent negative primes from maintaining depressed mood, consistent with Brewin's (1989) suggestion that one mechanism of psychotherapy is reducing the activation of situationally accessible negative representations.     

Mental health past age fifty: A growing specialty in psychotherapy

With the over-50 cohort becoming a major proportion of the population, the special needs and problems of this group call for special skills and knowledge on the part of psychotherapists involved with them. Not only are stage-related developmental considerations a factor, but repressed fears of physical depletion, failure to achieve life goals, and the ultimate reality of death all play a significant part, in therapists as well as patients. These need to be dealt with through exploration and confrontation.