Using Mental Imagery Against Negativity in Teenagers

Teenagers have been by far the fastest-growing problem demographic when it comes to mental health. Some of the reasons for this are not too hard to discern (COVID-19, social media), but the extent of the problem is extremely puzzling. And it is not clear what the solution would be. A new study, in conjunction with ongoing research on the uses of mental imagery in psychiatry, however, gives us a glimpse of a possible way ahead.

A relatively new development in various branches of psychiatry is to manipulate the mental imagery of patients in order to improve their condition, by means of techniques such as "imaginal exposure," "systematic desensitization," and "imagery rescripting." There are reports of the success of this methodology in the case of mental disorders ranging from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia to post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression.

Take post-traumatic stress disorder, as an example. The main symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder is the recurring and involuntary negative mental imagery of the traumatic event. When soldiers come back home after serving in war zones, for example, vivid and extremely negative mental imagery (in various sense modalities) is often triggered by various sensory stimuli (proverbially by fireworks, but also, for example, the smell of barbecue).

Another example is depression, where one of the most important indications of the level of depression is the lack of future positive mental imagery. Schizophrenia has been shown to be associated with more vivid negative mental imagery, which is responsible for changes in perception. And mental imagery has also been taken to be a central component of (especially non-restrictive) eating disorder as well as many forms of addiction.

Further, it is also known that susceptibility to various mental health issues is predicted by the vividness of the subject's mental imagery. Those with not at all vivid mental imagery, or those who report no mental imagery whatsoever (as the growing research on aphantasia shows), are much less likely to have mental health issues. And those who are at the opposite end of the vividness spectrum (who are often called hyperphantasics) are more prone to various mental health conditions.

There has been a fair amount of research on all of this as well as the various ways in which mental imagery could be used to treat trauma. But a freshly published study shows another aspect of the relationship between mental imagery and mental health, which may be more prosaic, but could have very widespread use not just in psychiatric treatment but also in everyday life.

This study examined how teenagers (between age 13 and 17) can use various methods as a means to distract from negative thoughts. Negative thoughts (of social exclusion, as a result of a rigged online game setup) was induced in these teenagers and different methods of distracting from these negative thoughts were compared. By far the most efficient was mental imagery of an unrelated phenomenon.

These results are also very much predicted by another body of research on the relation between mental imagery and desires. Mental imagery of neutral scenes, for example, a rose garden, reduces desire for a cigarette in people who are trying to give up smoking. Mental imagery of unrelated odors has the same effect. Desire for eating chocolate can also be reduced by the mental imagery of neutral scenes. So mental imagery can draw your attention away from your various desires. The new study shows that it is also great at drawing your attention away from negative thoughts.

The results of this experiment are of great importance not only in psychiatric practice, but also in regulating one's emotions on a daily or even hourly basis. And this, given the shocking scarcity of psychiatric resources for teenagers all over the world, is especially important.