New Thinking in Illness Study

This study looks at how the way that we tend to think a lot about certain things might influence our thoughts and behaviours that relate to acute illness, represented by cancer, and chronic illness, represented by diabetes. Increasing our understanding of how people think in response to illness may help identify individuals who may experience difficulties in adjusting to illness and also guide us in developing ways to help you overcome these difficulties.

To participate in this study, you need to be aged 18 or over and have been diagnosed with any of the following: Type I or Type 2 diabetes, breast, colorectal, gynaecological, prostate or skin cancer.

If you'd like to find out more about the study, please visit Thinking Style in Illness

NEWSFLASH!!! Now open to international participants.

Research study, participants needed

This will explain why I have been absent from the blog.

Rumination and Informational Preferences in Psychological and Behavioural Outcomes in Illness: Reliability and validity testing of the Multidimensional Rumination in Illness Scale (MRIS)

This project is part of a research program that examines the role of ruminative thinking in psychological and behavioural outcomes in illness. In looking at the way in which thinking style influences a person’s emotional and behavioural response to illness, it is hoped to provide a way of identifying individuals who may experience difficulties in adjusting to illness and also guide the development of appropriate interventions.

This stage of the project involves validation and reliability testing of the newly-developed Multidimensional Rumination in Illness Scale (MRIS).

For this project, I am seeking English-speaking people who are over 18. Participation involves the completion of an on-line questionnaire, which will take approximately 30 minutes.

This study has been approved by the Macquarie University Ethics Review Committee (Human Subjects).

If this project is of interest to you, please go to the following website to start the questionnaire:

Thinking Style in Illness

Serenity now!

Serenity now! Serenity now! SERENITY NOW!!!

You know, it doesn't matter how you say it, it doesn't really work. Although I have to say that remembering this classic Seinfeld scene always makes me a laugh.

Not quite what I was looking for at 4am this morning when I lay awake and could not switch my brain off. A never-ending stream of thoughts of family disagreements, work and future study issues. None of which are very serious or pressing but, nonetheless, I couldn't stop turning various scenarios over and over in my mind. I was playing the rumination game.

Once started, it can be very difficult to stop. Rumination can be a positive thing. It can boost mood when it focuses on pleasant memories and mentally running through issues can help generate solutions to problems for some. However, the flip side is that it can also increase focus on negative thoughts and even impair problem-solving, particularly in the setting of depression.

Often people try to interrupt the rumination process by thought stopping but that's never worked well for me. The more I try to not think of something, the more it pops into my head. Another commonly prescribed method of interrupting rumination involves the use of distraction techniques, simply diverting attention to something else whether it be an activity like going for a walk or reading a book.

I got up, dug out the Serenity Now! Seinfeld episode and guess what? I finally got serenity.

Hope you enjoy the clip.

Sweet, sweet memories

My mother recently gave me a brooch that I had bought for her on holiday when I was about six years old. A somewhat tacky looking article (truth be known), consisting of diamond shaped bits of coloured glass, surrounded by hearts constructed out of fake pearl. Immediately, I was transported back through the years. It cost me 2/6 in the old money. I thought it was wildly expensive, I thought it was a gem on a parallel with the crown jewels. I thought I'd given my mother the earth. Even writing about that now, I still can experience the joy and excitement I felt at that moment.

This all came to mind after reading about research from University of Southhampton in the UK. Psychologist Tim Wildschut and his colleagues have found nostalgic memories, such as I experienced, to be a potent mood booster. They found that people who write about good memories are more cheerful compared to people who write about everyday events, report higher self-esteem and feel more positively about their personal relationships. These findings reinforce earlier studies which also show the protective psychological benefits of nostalgia.

Does mentally revisiting times, places, events, interactions really help? In an earlier post on rumination, a kind of mental chewing of the cud, I highlighted its role in the influencing the onset, severity and duration of depression. Isn't nostalgia a variation on the same thing and, therefore, potentially unhelpful?

A critical difference lies in thought content.

Ruminating about unpleasant events can have negative effects, potentially placing the individual at risk of retraumatisation. Rumination can increase an existent bias towards negative thinking, including distorted interpretations of life events, more negative self-evaluations, a sense of loss of control and more pessimistic predictions about the future. Ruminators often fail to generate solutions to problems and, even when they do, they often express low confidence in their solutions and fail to act on them.

However, with pleasant events, rumination can have a positive impact. Dr. Sonja Lyubormirsky of the University of California, one of the leading researchers on rumination, says this makes perfect sense.

"You don't want to get past a positive experience.

There's a magic and mystery in positive events, so analysing

them lifts the veil and makes wondrous events more ordinary."

Read more about the positive effects of nostalgia and strategies for incorporating good memories into your life here.

Ruminations on depression

"It's not what you think but the way you think it."

I have been spending a lot of my time thinking about rumination recently. Rumination can be likened to a mental chewing of the cud, a repetitive thinking about issues or problems without any real progression to action. It's apt then that this is the area underlying my thesis, because it's been a lot of thought and very little action so far.

It is widely accepted that the content of our thoughts can influence the way we feel. However, a growing body of research demonstrates that the way in which we think about things is important in determining the severity and duration of depression.

Work by Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema has examined the role of ruminative thinking in depression: specifically, a repetitive focus by the individual on being depressed, on the symptoms of his or her depression and on the cause, meanings and consequences of those symptoms. (1) Typical contemplations might include questions such as, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ and statements like, ‘I’ll never feel good again.’

How does rumination impact on depression?

The inward-focus inherent in rumination can increase an existent bias towards negative thinking, including distorted interpretations of life events, more negative self-evaluations, a sense of loss of control and more pessimistic predictions about the future. (2) (3) In what could be termed a snowball effect, this can initiate further concerns which then accumulate.

Rumination can affect problem-solving ability. Ruminators often fail to generate solutions to problems. Even when they do, they often express low confidence in their solutions and fail to act on them. (2) While active cognitive coping can be adaptive initially, thinking about ways to improve a situation raises levels of anxiety and depression when it fails to be followed up by subsequent action. (4) As a result, an increasing sense of failure and a general sense of hopelessness can occur, resulting in a further escalation in the severity and duration of depression.

Rumination can also impair social support. Constant rumination can drive others away, which can start off a whole new cycle of rumination. "Why are people abandoning me?" A loss of social support can be critical because social support can act as a distraction and divert attention away from depressed mood and its consequences. (5)

Are you a ruminator?

Assess your own tendency to think about problems.

Are you an obsessive thinker? Would you generally spend more than five minutes thinking about a problem? Ask others what they think.

If so, you are probably likely to ruminate.

Breaking out of the rumination cycle

Distraction techniques can help break the rumination cycle by reducing the tendency to focus on problems. (2) Engaging in activity can help break the stranglehold of obsessive thinking. Go for a walk. Read a book. Watch a movie.

Learn to recognise and reappraise negative perceptions of events and high expectations of others.

Let go of unrealistic goals.

Break down problems into a series of more manageable tasks which can then be acted upon.

For further reading on rumination

It's the thought that counts

Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema

Edited by Costas Papageorgiou and Adrian Wells