Objectives: The present study compares the effectiveness of two strategies, reappraisal and distraction, in reducing negative affect in older adults induced by focusing on personally relevant negative events and stressors.
Participants: 30 adults with major depressive disorger (MDD) and 40 never-depressed (ND) comparison participants ages 60 years and over (mean age = 69.7 years).
Design and measurements: Participants underwent three affect induction trials, each followed by a different emotion regulation strategy: distraction, reappraisal, and a no-instruction control condition. Self-reported affect was recorded pre- and post-affect induction, and at one-minute intervals during regulation.
Results: Across groups, participants reported greater reductions in negative affect with distraction than reappraisal or the no-instruction control condition. An interaction between group and regulation condition indicated that distraction was more effective in reducing negative affect in the MDD group than the ND group.
Conclusions: These results suggest that distraction is an especially effective strategy for reducing negative affect in older adults with MDD. Finding ways to incorporate distraction skills into psychotherapeutic interventions for late-life MDD may improve their effectiveness, especially for short-term improvement of affect following rumination.
Keywords: Late-life depression; distraction; emotion regulation; reappraisal.
Copyright © 2014 American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.