The Best Way To Fix A Sad Mood

What's the best way to improve a sad mood? It may be whatever skill you think you're best at, a new study suggests.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Think you're good at mindfulness techniques? Then that may work best for you. Or do you believe a more cognitive approach is your strength? Then use that.

One reason for this finding's importance is that for many years, psychotherapists focused on trying to fix what was wrong with their clients. In recent years, it has become more common to focus on a client's strengths and use them to help deal with their problems, such as depression.

A recent study involved 616 undergraduate students. The researchers briefly told participants about two therapy skills -- cognitive and mindfulness -- that they said may be useful in their everyday lives. Both are used by therapists to help clients with issues such as depression. Cognitive skills were defined as identifying and re-evaluating negative thoughts and beliefs. Mindfulness skills were defined as awareness and acceptance of one's thoughts and feelings without trying to change them. Participants were then given a hypothetical situation in which they could use those skills -- feeling hurt by not being invited to a social event by a friend -- and directed to practice both skills and complete some measures on how they used them.Each participant was randomly told that one of the skills -- cognitive or mindfulness -- was their strongest skill or their weakest skill and they would be using that skill in the next part of the experiment -- a "sad mood induction."The researchers then made participants sad by having them vividly imagine someone they cared about dying while they listened to the sad song "Russia under the Mongolian Yoke," played at half speed to make it sound even sadder.

As expected, most people reported a significant decrease in mood immediately following the induction!  Participants were then asked to respond to five mood assessments in the minutes after the sad mood induction.

All participants saw their mood gradually improve after the induction was over. Results showed that whether they were asked to use cognitive or mindfulness skills didn't have a significant effect on mood recovery -- but the framing of whether they were told it was their strongest or weakest skill did. Participants who were told that the skill they would use was their strongest -- regardless of whether it was cognitive or mindfulness -- saw a bigger improvement in mood than participants who worked with a skill they were told was their weakest.

Reference: “Framing an intervention as focused on one’s strength: Does framing enhance therapeutic benefit?” by Samuel T. Murphy, Jennifer S. Cheavens and Daniel R. Strunk, 3 January 2022, Journal of Clinical Psychology.