Kindness meditation helps people with depression recall positive autobiographic memories, study finds

Love and kindness to yourself and others helps with depression? Did we not know that for hundreds or thousands of years?

Excerpt from PLOS ONE announcement email:
"The new approach builds off previous research linking depression to the retrieval of autobiographical memories
A meditation that guides people to practice unconditional kindness to themselves and others helps people with a history of depression recall specific personal memories, according to a new study ...
Autobiographic memory is essential to human functioning in areas such as self-concept, emotion regulation and problem-solving. Research has suggested that, among the cognitive processes disrupted by depression, the retrieval of autobiographical memory is often impaired.
In the new work, the researchers collected data on autographical memory for 50 students with a prior history of depression. Participants were asked to write details of specific personal memories in response to cue words. As a control condition, 25 of the students were then assigned to digitally color an image each day—an intervention which has been shown to decrease anxiety. The other 25 students were asked to participate in a daily ten-minute mediation which included visualizations of different individuals and a mantra encouraging happiness, health, loving-kindness and peace. After four weeks, people who had been in the kindness meditation group had a greater increase in the retrieval of specific memories compared to those in the coloring group. Over time, the total memory specificity and levels of rumination improved for people who had been in the meditation intervention. Recall of positive-specific memories also improved for people in both the meditation and coloring groups. However, correlations between the meditation group’s performance and the remoteness of memories were less clear. ..."

From the abstract:
"Individuals with a history of depression have an increased risk for future episodes. This risk has been linked with impaired features of autobiographical memory retrieval that remain when depressive symptoms abate, including memory specificity, remoteness, valence, and vantage perspective. Rumination has been shown to influence these impairments and can be reduced via compassion training. We therefore investigated the effects of a self-compassion meditation on autobiographical memory retrieval in remitted depression. Baseline data were collected (n = 50) using an extended version of the Autobiographical Memory Test where participants with remitted depression retrieved specific memories from a remote time period (10 cues) and from any time period (10 cues). Valence and vantage perspective were rated. Participants were then randomly allocated to a self-compassion meditation or (control) colouring intervention group. Baseline measures were reassessed after four weeks of the intervention. Results revealed increased retrieval of specific memories in the self-compassion group in comparison to the colouring group, and an increase in positive and field memories across groups while no remoteness changes were observed. This self-compassion meditation demonstrated initial promise as an intervention to influence features of autobiographical memory retrieval in remitted depression. Improvements were shown in specificity, valence, and vantage perspective. Addressing these features with this type of intervention might reduce a cognitive vulnerability to depression and should be investigated in future studies."

Increasing autobiographical memory specificity: Using kindness meditation to impact features of memory retrieval (open access)