Professor Tatia Lee’s Research Study Shows that Loneliness is More Likely to Cause Depression if One Keeps Ruminating on How Lonely They are
Given the widely reported high co-occurrence between loneliness and depression, a research team led by Professor Tatia M.C. Lee, Director of the State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Chair Professor of Psychological Science and Clinical Psychology, and May Professor in Neuropsychology, sought to understand the underlying mechanisms.
The research findings indicated that ruminating on the feeling of loneliness was the key underlying factor that modulated the loneliness-depression relationship. Specifically, a connection between a specific ruminative thought (“think about how alone you are”) and a particular item of loneliness (“how often do you feel alone”) is indeed essential in maintaining the loneliness-rumination-depression network.”
This study was recently published in Nature Mental Health, in an article entitled “A network analysis of rumination on loneliness and the relationship with depression”.
(Link to the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44220-024-00350-x)
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