Daily Times

Learning to stop repetitive brooding on problems can lift people out of depression, a scientific study has found.

While it may seem a simple solution, helping sufferers to stop thinking over the same problems led to significant improvements in their mental health.

Professor Roger Hagen of the Norwegian University of Science & Technology said the approach was remarkably successful in a study of a treatment called meta-cognitive therapy.

The method is similar to ‘mindfulness’ techniques, encouraging patients to let go of thoughts entering their minds, without dwelling on them.

The experiment looked at 39 people suffering from depression, divided into two groups – one receiving MCT, the other untreated for ten weeks.

Six months after the trial, 80 percent of the MCT group had achieved full recovery from their depression diagnosis, the researchers reported.

Professor Hagen said, “The relapse rate in our study is much lower – only a few percent.”

He added that depressed individuals “don’t need to worry and ruminate’ and ‘just realising this is liberating for a lot of people”.

“Some people ruminate because they think going over a problem again and again will lead to a solution.”

Professor Hagen said, “Some people experience their persistent ruminative thinking as completely uncontrollable, but individuals with depression can gain control over it.”

MCT, developed by Professor Adrian Wells at Manchester University, differs from one of the main approaches used by the NHS called cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which involves challenging negative interpretations of reality.

Professor Hagen said CBT may encourage the depressed person to address the content of their thoughts, but this can lead to them dwelling more.

Depression affects nearly one in six in the UK. Treatments include anti-depressants and talking cures such as CBT. Some NHS trusts offer ‘mindfulness-based stress reduction’, similar to MCT.

Professor Hagen said, “The patients come in thinking they’re going to talk about all the problems they have and get to the bottom of it, but instead we try to find out how their mind and thinking processes work. You can’t control what you think, but you can control how you respond to what you think.”

Asked whether the approach was similar to the Bobby McFerrin song “Don’t worry, be happy,” he said it was more a case of ‘Don’t ruminate, be happy.’

He added, “As the Beatles song goes, ‘Let it be’. If you let your thoughts be, they will disappear.”

Stephen Buckley, of mental health charity Mind, said, “It’s important people with depression are supported to find the right treatment for them, and having the broadest range of therapies available helps. We would welcome further research that looked at longer-term outcomes.”