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simple thought exercise may boost resilience

participants received a five-minute online training session in reappraisal therapy.

by dave yasvinski

aug 3 2021

2 minute read

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simple thought exercise may boost resilience

the research focused on participants from 87 different countries. getty

a simple therapy that helps people think differently about their current situation helped ease the emotional toll of the pandemic, a new study says.

the research, published in the journal nature human behaviour , found the emotional regulation therapy known as reappraisal “consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions” among participants. the study is the result of a year-long effort by nearly 400 researchers from 87 countries who collected 28,000 responses from weary participants around the world.

“the findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world to build resilience during the pandemic and beyond,” researchers wrote .

the study tested two common methods of reappraisal therapy: reconstrual and repurposing. reconstrual helps alter how a person mentally construes a situation in an effort to elicit a different emotional response. repurposing attempts to achieve the same result by helping people focus on the potentially positive outcomes of a difficult situation — in this case, for example, by considering how the pandemic has helped people focus on the things that really matter in life.

participants received a five-minute online training session in reappraisal therapy. researchers then mesaured emotional response to a series of photos about the pandemic. these responses were compared to an active control group that was told to reflect on their thoughts and feelings when looking at the photos and a passive control group that was given little to no instruction.

they team found both methods of reappraisal therapy had a significant positive impact that was equal to — or greater than — the emotional harm caused by living in lockdown. “both approaches significantly decreased negative emotional responses and significantly increased positive emotional responses across all primary outcome measures,” the study said.

these improved emotional responses to the pandemic did not cause participants to relax their intentions to engage in preventative health practices — something that concerned researchers prior to the study — proving the techniques do not pose a risk to the spread of the virus.

the study had a few limitations worth noting, namely that the sample studied was not nationally representative within each country or region and may have been over-represented by women, younger people and people with internet access. the photos used in the study may also not have been as representative of local situations for certain participants in the study.

still, researchers said reappraisal therapy proved to be a viable method of helping people resiliently respond to emotionally distressing situations. they hope policymakers take note and employ these therapies more widely. the study includes compelling data — as opposed to the anecdotal evidence of the past — from countries around the world that suggests these therapies could become a vital component of public health.

“our results highlight the benefits of applying reappraisal interventions at scale to increase psychological resilience and to mitigate the adverse impacts of the covid-19 pandemic —benefits that could potentially be applied in other contexts that elicit negative emotions,” they conclude. “essential workers, nurses and doctors, students, patients and many other populations whose work and life are highly affected by the pandemic could potentially benefit from reappraisal interventions.

“because these interventions are inexpensive, brief and scalable, they could be implemented through a variety of media and communication mechanisms, such as advertising campaigns, speeches, courses, apps and mobile games.”

dave yasvinski is a writer with  healthing.ca

dave yasvinski

simple thought exercise may boost resilience

participants received a five-minute online training session in reappraisal therapy.

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simple thought exercise may boost resilience

participants received a five-minute online training session in reappraisal therapy.

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