Contagious depression

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Contagious depression is "a theory proposing that depression can be induced or triggered by our social environment". [1] This is a form of emotional and social contagion, or mass psychogenic illness, that psychologists such as Fritz Redl and Ladd Wheeler have long studied. Similar to social contagion it presents itself in two ways: behavioral contagion and emotional contagion. Behavioral is based on physical changes in a person's actions while emotional has to do with a person's mood. This phenomenon is similar to the concept of an "empath" in the way that someone's emotions affect another person. Many studies also show that the mere proximity a person has to someone with depression the more likely they are to get it. [2] This is because of the idea of "mirror neuron systems". [1] This idea shows that people internalize and process the emotions of others as their own and end up transmitting this learned emotion to others. [3]

Contents

History

The earliest recounts of contagious depression date back to the ancient Greeks and Romans who discovered that there are environmental factors that affect mental health and overall well-being and that the results of this also influence those around them. [4] Many years after this there was a term coined to explain this and it was "behavioral contagion". It was introduced by Gustave Le Bon in his work published in 1895, titled "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind". A decade later the term “social contagion” was coined by Herbert Blumer to be a broad umbrella term. Following this, other researchers such as Kurt Lewin and Muzafer Sherif went on to further study the influence that social factors may have on individual behavior, which made a foundation for more studies to be done on this sort of mental contagion. [5]

Studies

In 1994 a study was conducted on 100 college roommates and the results showed that spending three weeks in the same room as a depressed roommate increased the risk and frequency of depression on the other roommate. [6] A different study from 2011 went so far as to suggest that friendships are made and destroyed based on each person’s level of depression. When analyzing more than 900 students, it was found that the depression symptoms of the depressed target students converged toward an “average level” over time, meaning the less depressed kids became more depressed, and vice versa. [7] Another study done in Denmark tracked depression drug usage to decipher the hypothesis that when an individual is depressed there is an increased likelihood that their spouse will also be depressed”. The result supports the hypothesis and furthered the idea that between “spouses, and possibly others who are socially connected, share indicators of depression”. [8]

In relationships

A number of studies show that people in relationships with someone who is depressed are at a higher risk for developing depression themselves. [9] A study conducted in 1992 by Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson asserts that people in committed, intimate relationships are more invested in their partner’s moods which serves as a rich context for emotional contagion, and due to this, this group is greatly influenced by the contagious depression. [10] These studies also suggest that reassurance-seeking tendencies are excessive when it comes to those in relationships who are depressed. [11] According to Coyne’s Interactional Theory of Depression, people who engage in these types of tendencies are more likely to be prone to depression when their partners don’t give them this validation. [12] Coyne claims that depressed people create negative effects on others and that this leads to a cycle of interaction between a depressed and the other which in turn ends up succumbing to these feelings because of the repetitive exposure. [13] There are a number of things that can account for this contagion among spouses higher than any other demographic. One of the claims is that spouses empathize with their partners and in turn, they end up sharing one emotion. [14] Another reason is that someone with depression is simply not enjoyable to be around hence it decreases the partner’s mental health. Two other factors are the proximity between spouses and the guilt that comes of being partners with someone with depression which in turn leads to depression from this partner as well. [15]

Criticism

Contagious depression has faced some criticism especially because there is no direct definition. Additionally, skeptics may argue that the spread of depressive tendencies and symptoms doesn't necessarily imply a sort of causation and it may be more of a “coincidence”. Another criticism is the oversimplification of depression. [16] Saying that it is just a contagion makes it seem like anyone can suffer from it and that it is just like any common flu. The last criticism is that some scholars believe that this type of behavior is better described through a different concept. [16]

Related Research Articles

In psychology, a mood is an affective state. In contrast to emotions or feelings, moods are less specific, less intense and less likely to be provoked or instantiated by a particular stimulus or event. Moods are typically described as having either a positive or negative valence. In other words, people usually talk about being in a good mood or a bad mood. There are many different factors that influence mood, and these can lead to positive or negative effects on mood.

A self-serving bias is any cognitive or perceptual process that is distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner. It is the belief that individuals tend to ascribe success to their own abilities and efforts, but ascribe failure to external factors. When individuals reject the validity of negative feedback, focus on their strengths and achievements but overlook their faults and failures, or take more credit for their group's work than they give to other members, they are protecting their self-esteem from threat and injury. These cognitive and perceptual tendencies perpetuate illusions and error, but they also serve the self's need for esteem. For example, a student who attributes earning a good grade on an exam to their own intelligence and preparation but attributes earning a poor grade to the teacher's poor teaching ability or unfair test questions might be exhibiting a self-serving bias. Studies have shown that similar attributions are made in various situations, such as the workplace, interpersonal relationships, sports, and consumer decisions.

Interpersonal attraction, as a part of social psychology, is the study of the attraction between people which leads to the development of platonic or romantic relationships. It is distinct from perceptions such as physical attractiveness, and involves views of what is and what is not considered beautiful or attractive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gratitude</span> Feeling or attitude in acknowledgement of a benefit that one has received or will receive

Gratitude, thankfulness, or gratefulness is a feeling of appreciation by a recipient of another's kindness. This kindness can be gifts, help, favors, or another form of generosity to another person.

Depressive realism is the hypothesis developed by Lauren Alloy and Lyn Yvonne Abramson that depressed individuals make more realistic inferences than non-depressed individuals. Although depressed individuals are thought to have a negative cognitive bias that results in recurrent, negative automatic thoughts, maladaptive behaviors, and dysfunctional world beliefs, depressive realism argues not only that this negativity may reflect a more accurate appraisal of the world but also that non-depressed individuals' appraisals are positively biased.

Isolation is a defence mechanism in psychoanalytic theory, first proposed by Sigmund Freud. While related to repression, the concept distinguishes itself in several ways. It is characterized as a mental process involving the creation of a gap between an unpleasant or threatening cognition and other thoughts and feelings. By minimizing associative connections with other thoughts, the threatening cognition is remembered less often and is less likely to affect self-esteem or self concept. Freud illustrated the concept with the example of a person beginning a train of thought and then pausing for a moment before continuing to a different subject. His theory stated that by inserting an interval, the person was "letting it be understood symbolically that he will not allow his thoughts about that impression or activity to come into associative contact with other thoughts." As a defense against harmful thoughts, isolation prevents the self from allowing these cognitions to become recurrent and possibly damaging to the self-concept.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social support</span> Support systems for individuals

Social support is the perception and actuality that one is cared for, has assistance available from other people, and most popularly, that one is part of a supportive social network. These supportive resources can be emotional, informational, or companionship ; tangible or intangible. Social support can be measured as the perception that one has assistance available, the actual received assistance, or the degree to which a person is integrated in a social network. Support can come from many sources, such as family, friends, pets, neighbors, coworkers, organizations, etc.

Emotional contagion is a form of social contagion that involves the spontaneous spread of emotions and related behaviors. Such emotional convergence can happen from one person to another, or in a larger group. Emotions can be shared across individuals in many ways, both implicitly or explicitly. For instance, conscious reasoning, analysis, and imagination have all been found to contribute to the phenomenon. The behaviour has been found in humans, other primates, dogs, and chickens.

Emotional dysregulation is characterized by an inability to flexibly respond to and manage emotional states, resulting in intense and prolonged emotional reactions that deviate from social norms, given the nature of the environmental stimuli encountered. Such reactions not only deviate from accepted social norms but also surpass what is informally deemed appropriate or proportional to the encountered stimuli.

Caring in intimate relationships is the practice of providing care and support to an intimate relationship partner. Caregiving behaviours are aimed at reducing the partner's distress and supporting their coping efforts in situations of either threat or challenge. Caregiving may include emotional support and/or instrumental support. Effective caregiving behaviour enhances the care-recipient's psychological well-being, as well as the quality of the relationship between the caregiver and the care-recipient. However, certain suboptimal caregiving strategies may be either ineffective or even detrimental to coping.

Neuroticism is a personality trait associated with negative emotions. It is one of the Big Five traits. Individuals with high scores on neuroticism are more likely than average to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, pessimism, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. Such people are thought to respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations, such as minor frustrations, as appearing hopelessly difficult. Their behavioral responses may include procrastination, substance use, and other maladaptive behaviors, which may temporarily aid in relieving negative emotions and generating positive ones.

Positive illusions are unrealistically favorable attitudes that people have towards themselves or to people that are close to them. Positive illusions are a form of self-deception or self-enhancement that feel good; maintain self-esteem; or avoid discomfort, at least in the short term. There are three general forms: inflated assessment of one's own abilities, unrealistic optimism about the future, and an illusion of control. The term "positive illusions" originates in a 1988 paper by Taylor and Brown. "Taylor and Brown's (1988) model of mental health maintains that certain positive illusions are highly prevalent in normal thought and predictive of criteria traditionally associated with mental health."

Social undermining is the expression of negative emotions directed towards a particular person or negative evaluations of the person as a way to prevent the person from achieving their goals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wediko Children's Services</span> American organization for children

Wediko Children's Services is a non-profit organization that provides therapeutic and educational services to children with serious emotional and behavioral problems and their families. It was founded in 1934.

Self-concealment is a psychological construct defined as "a predisposition to actively conceal from others personal information that one perceives as distressing or negative". Its opposite is self-disclosure.

In psychology, the positivity offset is a phenomenon where people tend to interpret neutral situations as mildly positive, and rate their lives as good, most of the time. The positivity offset stands in notable asymmetry to the negativity bias.

Interpersonal emotion regulation is the process of changing the emotional experience of one's self or another person through social interaction. It encompasses both intrinsic emotion regulation, in which one attempts to alter their own feelings by recruiting social resources, as well as extrinsic emotion regulation, in which one deliberately attempts to alter the trajectory of other people's feelings.

Marriage and health are closely related. Married people experience lower morbidity and mortality across such diverse health threats as cancer, heart attacks, and surgery. There are gender differences in these effects which may be partially due to men's and women's relative status. Most research on marriage and health has focused on heterosexual couples, and more work is needed to clarify the health effects on same-sex marriage. Simply being married, as well as the quality of one's marriage, has been linked to diverse measures of health. Research has examined the social-cognitive, emotional, behavioral and biological processes involved in these links.

Emotional approach coping is a psychological construct that involves the use of emotional processing and emotional expression in response to a stressful situation. As opposed to emotional avoidance, in which emotions are experienced as a negative, undesired reaction to a stressful situation, emotional approach coping involves the conscious use of emotional expression and processing to better deal with a stressful situation. The construct was developed to explain an inconsistency in the stress and coping literature: emotion-focused coping was associated with largely maladaptive outcomes while emotional processing and expression was demonstrated to be beneficial.

M. Lynne Cooper is the Curators' Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Missouri. She is known for her research on risk-taking and psychological adjustment of adolescents, young adults, and couples. Many of her studies and published works are related to alcohol, substance use, and sexual activity in adolescents and young adults at the transition to adulthood. Other influential research has examined health outcomes of parents who experience stress due to conflicts between work and family responsibilities.

References

  1. 1 2 Paz, Lisie Valeria (2022). "Contagious depression: Automatic mimicry and the mirror neuron system - A review"". Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. 134. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.12.032.
  2. ↑ Horesh, Danny (2021). "The Contagion of Psychopathology across Different Psychiatric Disorders: A Comparative Theoretical Analysis". Brain Sciences. 12 (1): 67. doi: 10.3390/brainsci12010067 . PMC   8774068 . PMID   35053808.
  3. ↑ Whittaker, Geoffrey (2022). "Is Depression Contagious?".
  4. ↑ Fornaro, Michele (2009). "Medicine and psychiatry in Western culture: Ancient Greek myths and modern prejudices". Annals of General Psychiatry. 8 (21). doi: 10.1186/1744-859X-8-21 . PMC   2762970 . PMID   19811642.
  5. ↑ "Kurt Lewin". February 8, 2024.
  6. ↑ Joiner, TE (1994). "Contagious depression: Existence, specificity to depressed symptoms, and the role of reassurance seeking". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 67 (2): 287–296. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.67.2.287. PMID   7932064.
  7. ↑ Eisenberg, Daniel (2012). "Social Contagion of Mental Health: Evidence from College Roommates". Health Economics. 22 (8): 965–986. doi:10.1002/hec.2873. PMC   4381550 . PMID   23055446.
  8. ↑ Kristensen, Thomas Borup (2022). "Does depression co-occur within households? The moderating effects of financial resources and job insecurity on psychological contagion". SSM - Population Health. 19. doi:10.1016/j.ssmph.2022.101212. PMC   9449845 . PMID   36091298.
  9. ↑ Katz, Jennifer; Beach, Steven R. H.; Joiner, Thomas E. (1999). "Contagious Depression in Dating Couples". Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. 18: 1–13. doi:10.1521/jscp.1999.18.1.1.
  10. ↑ Hatfield, Elaine; Cacioppo, John T.; Rapson, Richard L. (1993). "Emotional Contagion". Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2 (3): 96–100. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.ep10770953.
  11. ↑ "Is Depression Contagious? The Impact Of Depression On Relationships".
  12. ↑ Burchill, Stiles, SA, WB (1988). "Interactions of depressed college students with their roommates: not necessarily negative". J Pers Soc Psychol. 55 (3): 410–419. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.55.3.410. PMID   3171913.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ↑ Burchill, S. A.; Stiles, W. B. (September 1988). "Interactions of depressed college students with their roommates: not necessarily negative". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 55 (3): 410–419. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.55.3.410. ISSN   0022-3514. PMID   3171913.
  14. ↑ Parkinson, Brian; Simons, Gwenda (August 2009). "Affecting others: social appraisal and emotion contagion in everyday decision making". Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin. 35 (8): 1071–1084. doi:10.1177/0146167209336611. ISSN   0146-1672. PMID   19474455.
  15. ↑ Parkinson, Brian; Simons, Gwenda (August 2009). "Affecting others: social appraisal and emotion contagion in everyday decision making". Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin. 35 (8): 1071–1084. doi:10.1177/0146167209336611. ISSN   0146-1672. PMID   19474455.
  16. 1 2 Gurung, Tashi (November 14, 2022). "The oversimplification of mental health".
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