Emotions in Depression: What Do We Really Know?
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2017
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032816-045252
Abstract
Major depressive disorder is among the most common and costly of all mental health conditions, and in the last 20 years, emotional dysfunction has been increasingly seen as central to depression. Accordingly, research on emotions in depression has proceeded with fury. The urgency of the work has tempted investigators to issue premature declarations and to sometimes overlook theoretical and methodological challenges entailed in studying emotion. I report on what we have learned thus far about how depression influences emotional reactivity and emotion regulation, and also carefully demarcate the vast terrain of what we do not yet know. Ironically, an attitude of humility may enable the field to achieve the ambitious but elusive goal of developing a rich, contextually specific account of depression-related changes in emotional reactivity and regulation. Such an account is a precondition for using knowledge about emotion to intervene more effectively to reduce depression's worldwide burden.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, v. 13, p. 241-263
Scholar Commons Citation
Rottenberg, Johnathan, "Emotions in Depression: What Do We Really Know?" (2017). Psychology Faculty Publications. 2497.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/psy_facpub/2497
