Depression and anxiety rates are on the rise, especially among the youth. One way people can overcome this debilitating disorder is through cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which helps to recognize and reshape negative thoughts to bring joy back into depressed people’s lives.
However, CBT might not always address patients’ need for social connections, which are essential for mental health and can also alleviate anxiety and depression.
To determine the best way that people with depression and anxiety can benefit from social connections, a group of researchers at The Ohio State University randomly assigned participants 1 of 3 tasks.
The first group was asked to perform three randomacts of kindness for a stranger, such as buying them a coffee or offering to shovel snow off their driveway. The second group of participants was asked to plan a social activity on two days of the week. These were defined as “big or small activities you intentionally plan with other people for the purpose of enjoyment.”
The third was asked to fill out a workbook twice a week to identify distressing thoughts to make them less of a problem.
Comments (0)