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Repetitive negative thinking associated with cognitive decline in older adults

• aborsy 1y ago
  How do politicians and people in the business world maintain a normal life? There are constant attacks, backstabbing, sues, etc.
  • lm28469 1y ago
    They mostly don't, that's why they look 10+ years older than they are and are stressed as fuck
  • jraby3 1y ago
    At least in business, this isn't really true. It makes more sense to form long term partnerships by being trustworthy than to have a reputation of hostility and lawsuits.
• untrimmed 1y ago
  Is it possible that we're just better at reporting our negative thoughts, not that we have more of them? Or is overthinking the price we pay for analyzing everything?
  • EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 1y ago
    I think there is not a single person on Earth without repetitive negative thoughts.
• rzzzt 1y ago
  In... mice? Nay, this time it is adults over the age of 60.
• dimensional_dan 1y ago
  Oh man one more negative thing to worry about.
• sindriava 1y ago
  10/10 exactly what people with these issues want to hear. Great thing to post OP!
  • geoduck14 1y ago
    Can't people with these type of issues control what they think about? Can't they have a go-to list of positive things to think about when they notice they are thinking negative thoughts?
    • IAmBroom 1y ago
      Short answer: no, you can't just "think positive" your way out of mental illness. Also: Correlation is not causation; we don't know that avoiding these RNTs changes anything in the brain chemistry.
      • throwaway77385 1y ago
        The only thing I'd add to this (as someone with stupidly depressive and negative thought patterns), is that there are techniques that can help. The parent comment comes off as flippant, but I am going to assume it's not intended that way. Learning to think more positively takes an incredible amount of effort. An effort which seemingly never goes away. It just never gets easier. It's like my brain is simply wired to assume the worst, worry and of course just constantly make suicide seem like some kind of great way out. So much so, that when I was younger, I had assumed everyone just walked around constantly wondering whether it'd be easier to just die. To this day, that's where my brain goes first. Decades of nearly daily thoughts of ending it. BUT and this is the crucial part, to me that was just always part of the noise. It's there, but it's not forcing my hand. I can both live and also constantly think that I don't particularly enjoy just existing for existence's sake and therefore death sort of seems like a viable alternative. I don't act upon it, because I'm too curious to see what's next, for the time being. Anyway, the techniques that people are often taught in therapy sound simple and obvious, but they are harder to do than one might assume. Especially for people deep in depression. Gratitude journaling is one of those things. It is quite boring and tedious to write down what one is grateful for in life. To write down every single good thing that happened in a day, no matter how small. BUT, it sort of forces you onto a track of positive thought. It literally blocks / occupies thought, because it takes effort to do and focuses the mind on the positive, even if for a short period of time. Similarly, as stupid as it sounds, sometimes it can help to simply sit up straight and smile. There is some feedback loop between pretending to be happy and then sort of feeling a bit happier all of a sudden. Doesn't always work, won't work for everyone and deep clinical depressions are a whole different ballgame. Exercise is a pretty big one for me as well. As much as I hate it, I always feel better afterwards. Again, the sum of various small techniques can eventually make a bit of a difference. I've come to terms with the fact that depression is hard-wired into my brain structure and it's not going anywhere. But, I have also made a ton of new pathways that allow me to more quickly switch into more positive and grateful modes of thinking. And this, in some ways, is like a list of positive things to think, like the parent comment alluded to. Though without all of the above, I'd also take offense at the implication that depressed people can somehow choose to be depressed and need to just stop being depressed. That notion is ridiculous and has prevailed for (what feels like) centuries of ignorance of mental conditions.
• kcoddington 1y ago
  I'm not seeing where they are coming up with RNT as a cause, other than a lot of theory. Wouldn't it be a symptom of cognitive decline instead? Dementia patients, particularly those with Alzheimers, tend to become depressed because of confusion and memory loss. Wouldn't it be more likely that these depression symptoms are being caused by deteriotating brain function rather than the other way around?
  • IAmBroom 1y ago
    They don't claim it's a cause. In fact, they explicitly state more research is needed to determine the relationship.
  • pessimizer 1y ago
    Of course. It would be bizarre if there weren't a relationship between Lewy Body dementia, Alzheimer's, or vascular dementia (which in old people, means you've gone into heart failure) and repetitive negative thoughts. For one, you know you've got an incurable disease that will inevitably destroy your mind, and you've become one of the rare class of people for which assisted suicide has almost no controversy, it's something you're putting down payments on. For two, you can't finish thoughts. My father was just diagnosed with Parkinson's a few months ago, and he already has trouble following any conversation, and knows it. If that didn't lead to depression, that's what would be notable. And any insight that he reaches that gives him comfort might be gone an hour later. It just seems like a silly study.
    • BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
      Wait down payments? Is that metaphorical? How much does that cost?
  • giantg2 1y ago
    I believe there have been other studies showing people with a history of depression develop dementia at higher rates. There are some that have shown the structural/signal changes that happen after longterm depression as well. These are things that occur years or decades before the dementia.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• cowpig 1y ago
  > RNT was assessed using the perseverative thinking questionnaire (PTQ). The scale consists of 15 items covering three domains: core characteristics of RNT, unproductiveness, and psychological capacity captured. Each item is rated on a 5-point Likert scale from 0 “never” to 4 “almost always”, with a total score ranging from 0 to 60. Can someone who works in this field explain to me how this study is anything other than evidence of one exam being a proxy for another? The "Repetitive Negative Thinking" is then just, like, a marketing term for their questionnaire? I don't see the questionnaire itself in the study (maybe I'm missing it?). Without understanding what questions were answered in a questionnaire, how am I supposed to take anything away from this study?
• notmyjob 1y ago
  “The prevalence of cognitive disorders is increasing year by year, placing a heavy burden on patients, families, and society. It is estimated that the total annual cost of dementia disease in China will reach $1.89 trillion in 2050 [4]. However, there is no drug that can stop or reverse the progression of dementia.” That is my own RNT. If only there were a way to escape from this reality. Death, taxes and global population collapse while a huge proportion of the voting population loses their ability to do basic tasks while still clinging to political hegemony in the nations they destroy. What a great time to be alive.
  • adamwong246 1y ago
    It's common for old fogies to claim that the future is bad and the past was best. But I don't remember a time in my life that was this stressful. I really do think the world is getting crazier, dumber, and just all around worse, this past decade most specifically. It seems the world has decided to just go nuts, shift into overdrive and metaphorically drive off a cliff. Everybody wants to escape the real world and live through their screens. Nothing is real and everything is a meme. And the fact that we allowed DJT to even approach the White House is such a damning indictment of America and it's vaunted democracy. The bad guys won, and there's no clear way to change that.
    • notmyjob 1y ago
      For many nations, DJT has been the best thing that has ever happened, by a wide indisputable margin. Not all nations, but some.
      • CamperBob2 1y ago
        Absolutely. Putin's regime has certainly benefited enormously.
        • notmyjob 1y ago
          North Korea was the one I was thinking about, and Pakistan, and one or more of our more notable allies.
• hliyan 1y ago
  I have a personal theory (I'm sure it's not a novel one and it probably has a name) that human brains are naturally predisposed to negative thought than positive thought because our brains are essentially evolved prediction engines. And because it is often easier and faster to lose something than gain it (e.g. it is usually less urgent to act on the signs of deer you might want to hunt and eat, than the sign of a tiger who might want to hunt and eat you), our prediction engines have a bias toward negative prediction. Conscious awareness of this fact (or rather, theory) has helped me curb negative thoughts at least to some extent.
  • euroderf 1y ago
    > it is often easier and faster to lose something than gain it And things that add to entropy are favored by nature, undoing human labor & endeavor. Related?
  • growingkittens 1y ago
    I know that traumatized human brains tend toward negativity. I don't believe it is a natural human condition, though. With trauma, the instincts you mentioned start applying to the wrong situations - trauma rewires the brain. "Minor" trauma, sustained trauma, traumatic events, can all contribute to this.
    • sindriava 1y ago
      This is likely a byproduct of us being too comfortable now. Not in the "you've got nothing real to worry about!" boomer rethoric kind of way, but in the sense that our baseline for reward has shifted a bit higher. So trauma can still present a very strong negative RL signal, while positive RL signals of similar magnitude become rarer.
      • hliyan 1y ago
        This is probably also evolutionary. Most species, once safe and sated, tend to calm down and relax, or even nap. But we humans suffer from boredom, which tend to agitate us into action even when there is no hunger or threat. Probably the evolutionary adaptation that allowed our particular lineage to overtake (and parhaps wipe out) other competing lines of homonids and develop civilization.
• FullKirby 1y ago
  Vaguely related video on a similar topic : https://youtu.be/tfbM6vYsW9g?si=yfZ3WQ9iHB2rNnba https://youtu.be/tfbM6vYsW9g?si=yfZ3WQ9iHB2rNnba
• b112 1y ago
  No, it's correlation not causation. When you get older, you see everyone making the same damn mistakes you made, but refusing to listen to you. Various reasons are given as to "No, this is different", but it isn't. Then, worse, you remember yourself saying "No, this is different", and how wrong you were, and it kinda bums you out a bit. You're watching a replay of yourself being a dumbass, which makes you angry at the situation. That doesn't mean every old person is negatively inclined, because some will think "Well, this is the way of it", and take solace in that fact that it's been happening since at least the start of recorded history. You, and your ancestors are one. And you finally get your grandparents. So even the optimists, feeling better, think "might as well play my part" then yell "get off my lawn!"
• sieste 1y ago
  > the participants in the Q3 and Q4 groups exhibited lower cognition scores (Q3:β = -0.180, 95%CI -2.849~-0.860; Q4:β = -0.164, 95% -2.611~-0.666) This seems wrong. If "β" is the estimate here (not sure), it should be inside the confidence interval, but is way outside...
  • Paracompact 1y ago
    Beta is dimensionless, in terms of standard deviations. In their results tables, you can find their unit versions under the column "B". These lie in the centers of the CIs, as expected.
• Jakap 1y ago
  What about just talking gibberish in your mind? https://studyfinds.org/buddhist-meditation-christian-tongues-similar/ https://studyfinds.org/buddhist-meditation-christian-tongues...
  • Sammi 1y ago
    Anecdotally: Happy people seem to like to talk about anything and everything. Unhappy people don't like to talk or only talk about one thing. I just got inspired on an llm prompt, and got these three koans, that to me are the most amazing things I've been able to get out of llms so far: https://pastebin.com/tc9uMWuw https://pastebin.com/tc9uMWuw Thank you for the set up.
    • nomorewords 1y ago
      I wonder if this is how daydreaming helps, especially as a kid. I think that being taught not to dream as much as an adult and being in the moment kind of removes this random focus in our brains
• endofreach 1y ago
  "Ah, the good old days... when we weren't this dumb"
• moab9 1y ago
  Repetitive negative thinking associated WITH EVERYTHING.
  • nicce 1y ago
    Does someone have a medicine for negative thinking?
    • motbus3 1y ago
      Quite hard these days to be positive:/
    • adamhartenz 1y ago
      Prozac
    • Blahah 1y ago
      Loss, humility, service. And the most important: community.
    • kinnth 1y ago
      meditation.
    • strken 1y ago
      Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) are effective at reducing negative thinking, although they don't come in pill form.
    • herval 1y ago
      Pretty much any antidepressant or anxiolytic
    • ScottBurson 1y ago
      Dark chocolate.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • 1y ago
• 01100011 1y ago
  Why is this getting so many upvotes? Are anxious techies reading the headline and thinking they're in the beginnings of cognitive decline because they have thoughts they feel are more negative than they should have? Relax folks...
• lutusp 1y ago
  > "Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) is a core symptom of a number of common psychological disorders and may be a modifiable process shared by many psychological risk factors that contribute to the development of cognitive impairment." (emphasis added) This strongly implies that changing negative thinking behavior might reduce cognitive impairment. But the study has no way to establish a cause-effect relationship -- that would require an entirely different kind of study, one that studies the brain, not the mind. In other words, a neuroscience study, one probably not possible at present. Like many psychology papers, this one implies a cause-effect relationship that isn't supported by the evidence, but one that suggests a role for talk therapy. It would be interesting to see a review of all modern psychological work, a hundred years from now, from the perspective of a neuroscience that doesn't yet exist, to see how often these articles turned out to be just-so stories with no connection to reality. A similar finding is that kids who smoke marijuana are likely to experience serious mental health issues later on -- that's indisputable. The problem is the same as in this case -- people assume a cause-effect relationship that isn't supported by the evidence. Maybe kids predisposed to mental health issues are more likely to use marijuana -- that possibility can't be excluded because all the studies are retrospective. Most people know I can be relied on to make this point, but until neuroscience matures, studies like this will suffer from a theory vacuum. One can only accomplish so much by studying symptoms, with no clue about root biological causes.
  • Aurornis 1y ago
    > A similar finding is that kids who smoke marijuana are likely to experience serious mental health issues later on -- that's indisputable. The problem is the same as in this case -- people assume a cause-effect relationship that isn't supported by the evidence. This is one of those topics where people will set an impossibly high standard for evidence and then use that to reject everything. We do actually know that heavy marijuana use is associated with increases of mental health conditions. We know that discontinuing heavy use can result in improvements in depression scores over time (following the withdrawal periods which, yes, exists despite decades of people claiming it doesn’t). We know that the increased availability of high concentration THC products has made it worse. Yet if you want to set your threshold for evidence so high that nothing short of a large scale RCT will answer the question you can ignore all of this, because such an RCT will never be produced for obvious ethical reasons. This pattern is common in topics where people simple don’t want to believe a casual relationship might exist. I knew a guy who started believing that there isn’t any strong evidence that flossing or even twice-daily brushing were important because he didn’t think the science proved causation that flossing and brushing improved dental health. He believed it was just correlation and people who were healthier in general were also flossing and brushing, coincidentally. His breath was terrible and he later abandoned those ideas when the dental problems undeniably arrived.
• OhioMan2943 1y ago
  Looks like we're in for further mass cognitive decline given the state of the world then. Cheery.
  • bogdan 1y ago
    Don't be so negative.
    • OhioMan2943 1y ago
      Hard not to be negative when you're 22 and have firsthand knowledge of how emotionally and intellectually stunted the coming generation is, and how much you've lost out on.
      • munificent 1y ago
        Consider how emotionally and intellectually stunted many generations were hundreds of years ago when information wasn't available, we knew very little about human psychology, and the state of medicine and technology meant that almost everyone suffered incredible trauma in their lives. And yet those where the generations that by care and force of will eventually birthed ours. Yes, it is a very scary time in the world right now. But it's not as scary as the Great Death, the Great Depression, or WWII and we were able to get from those to the prosperity that we have today.
• narrator 1y ago
  The reverse causation here is obvious. It's perfectly normal to be depressed about losing one's cognitive faculties.
  • LorenPechtel 1y ago
    And even if it isn't depression per se it might very well be a symptom of the mind starting to slip.
• bloomingeek 1y ago
  Realizing there are many variables in life, I'll chime in. I'm in my late sixties and catch myself everyday complaining to myself. Things are harder to do, my memory isn't shot, but is not quite as sharp and the old body is, well, not as responsive. Having said all this, I don't let it get to me because I knew all this was coming as I became more "senior". All things being even, we do have the power to control our thoughts and should. Hope is a much overlooked word these days. People we know, family and not looking for trouble can help us stay hopeful. Unfortunately not everyone has family or their living condition may not be ideal, this is when community is very helpful. If I may say, if you know an older person who you wonder about, ask them what's going on.
  • Dumblydorr 1y ago
    We can’t control our thoughts though, right? They just pop up, appearing randomly. We can control our attention and train ourselves not to get onboard trains of thought though. But I think it’s important to acknowledge thoughts randomly crop up and it’s not our fault.
    • natnatenathan 1y ago
      My personal belief is that we can’t control every thought, but we can make sure we’re in a positive feedback loop instead of a negative one. For example, when I am getting negative, I’ve learned to take a step back and try to figure out why. If I can’t get myself in a better mood, I go to bed early and generally wake up happier. I also try to structure my days to make time for the things that make me happier (exercise, eating well, friends, family, hobbies) and cut out things that make me feel more negative (social media, news, sugar, etc). Not perfect, but it helps.
• andy_ppp 1y ago
  Just skimmed the paper but isn't it just as likely cognitive decline caused the negative thinking?
  • jamiek88 1y ago
    They say is associated with. Not is caused by. More research needed. Could be cause or correlation.
• bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  cognitive decline is also associated with stress. So if you have a lot of stress in your life you will probably suffer cognitive decline. Also if you have a lot of stress in your life you will probably be a pretty negative person.
• idkfasayer 1y ago
  [dead]
• Nevermark 1y ago
  I already knew my best friend from childhood was a terminal cynical bastard. But now this! He has less time than I thought. I will have to forward it to him, and cross my fingers that he doesn't spiral. Thoughts and prayers, man. Before you suggest it, I can't tell him to just "think positive". He would physically explode. Implode? Something. Matter, antimatter.
  • lukan 1y ago
    "think positive" To be honest, I don't think that line ever helped someone who sees himself in the middle of deep shit. There is nothing positive about being in shit. The only thing that can help people stuck in such a mindset is somehow change their perspective. And yes, maybe that study will help in a way.
    • jajko 1y ago
      Its like saying "Just say no" to drugs once you are deep down some freebase crack addiction. Effin' clueless spit in the face
      • ahoka 1y ago
        Don't be so negative, take it easy! \s
  • qazxcvbnmlp 1y ago
    usually cynicism is a coping mechanism for underlying/subconscious pain... If you resolve that, then there is room for happier/positive thoughts to emerge. However, it's just like any other addiction (alcohol), it's not resolved in a day and takes hard work. Much more comfortable to think; (everything sucks, those in power are out to get me) than (wow I really had a high hope for what my life would be, and this sure isn't it).
• modeless 1y ago
  I recently saw this quote that I think is applicable: "I've noticed a very strong correlation between being very bad at predicting the future, and worrying a lot about the future"
• bradley13 1y ago
  Causation or correlation? Noticing your own cognitive decline is bound to be depressing.
• perlgeek 1y ago
  > Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) is a core symptom of a number of common psychological disorders and may be a modifiable process shared by many psychological risk factors that contribute to the development of cognitive impairment. The core assumption (or insight?) of Cognitive Therapy (and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is that our thoughts shape the way we feel. In this model, repetitive negative thoughts are actually a main cause of depression, not a symptom. If you're interested in this approach, I'd recommend the works of David Burns, for example his book "Feeling Great" or the Feeling Good Podcast.
  • moooo99 1y ago
    > In this model, repetitive negative thoughts are actually a main cause of depression, not a symptom. Wouldn‘t it be both? While the repeated negative thoughts are the cause, they‘re also the symptom how it show up and the reason why people seek out a diagnosis
    • perlgeek 1y ago
      Yes. "not just a symptom" would have been more accurate.
  • thorio 1y ago
    I came here to say: read this book, it's really great. I think if your depression is very deeply buried, it surely isn't enough to read it, but still it can open up quit some insights regarding the connection of what you think and how you feel. It makes it visible. There can also be other causes for depression is course. While studying and testing the exercises described in the book I discovered one other thing I'd like to share: to me it seems, to come out of a reappearing mental dip, you need to be very consistent in your efforts (mental / physical exercises and other habits you try to establish or change, to feel better). Anyone else?
  • raxxorraxor 1y ago
    This can surely be corrected with the happiness laser. Jokes aside, it should be noted that CBT might confuse cause and effect and the goal is to mold the behavior of people into something socially wanted or expected or just learn to live with something that cannot reasonably be changed.
• Amaury-El 1y ago
  I saw this with a family member. In their 60s, they started getting stuck on small worries and always assumed the worst. At first it just seemed like anxiety, but over time their memory and focus started slipping too. It was like their mind got stuck in a loop. What helped the most wasn’t medicine. It was little things, like going for walks together or having simple conversations. Just giving the brain something new to pay attention to seemed to make a real difference.
  • thorio 1y ago
    This is in my family too. One person always had a tendency of being overly worried and after children moved out and social life thinned or a bit, this became more prevalent. After years of trying to push that person towards trying out new things and enriching their life, I kind of gave up. You simply cannot convince someone about a medicine if they don't feel there is a problem. Still it's hard to see believing the person could be enjoying life more, especially during their retirement.
    • mdavid626 1y ago
      You can’t make someone change, if they don’t want to. This can be very sad. The person you love just fades away.
  • perlgeek 1y ago
    Another little thing you can try: music from their childhood / youth. Just yesterday I randomly came across a song we often heard in our shared apartment during University, and immediately I had 10 different memories from that time swirling around in my head.
  • pixl97 1y ago
    Hmm, I wonder if things like algorithm driven social media is causing a huge amount of cognitive decline?
    • lojban 1y ago
      The kids call it brainrot for a reason.
• leke 1y ago
  Repetitive negative thinking was a symptom of my undiagnosed ADHD. Getting diagnosed and medicated took away the repetitive negative thinking, or as I called it ruminating negative thought patterns.
  • wkat4242 1y ago
    I really wish I could get diagnosed too. My psychiatrist refuses to even consider it because she says with my psych history as a kid they'd have identified it. But that's nonsense because thinking some adhd has changed hugely since the 80s. You needed to be rain man to be seen as autistic. And adhd was only diagnosed for loud obnoxious kids. My psychiatrist is also very old and kinda clings to those definitions. But because of this I'm locked out of medication :'( I'm very typical of both though. AuDHD.
• dubegerrie 1y ago
  After my PD diagnosis, I started out taking only Azilect, then Mirapex and sinemet as the disease progressed but didn’t help much. In July last year, I started on PD-5 TREATMENT PROTOCOL from www. Uinehealthcentre. com. Few months into the treatment, I made a significant recovery. After I completed the recommended treatment plan, almost all my symptoms were gone, had wonderful improvement with my movement and tremors . Its been 6 months since I completed the treatment, I live a better life..
• LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
  This is why ignorance is bliss! If you can afford it. Mix in some stoicism and meditation, do some 'reality checks' every once in a while to not totally 'lose it', and life is good. If you can afford it. Otherwise? Bad luck. Still try that stoicism and meditation thing. Cats or other pets can help. Good sex too. Drugs? Just maybe.
• AbstractH24 1y ago
  Chicken, egg, or correlation without causation? [and/]or, a contributing factor to the rightward shift of Western society?
• jurschreuder 1y ago
  Almost as if people who have a better life are happier, if you believe this study it almost seems like feelings are somehow related to the external world
• mbrochh 1y ago
  This sounds bogus. What if something else causes negative thinking and then in the long run cognitive decline... ...like... eating excessive amounts of carbs and seed oils while also having a sedentary lifestyle and no exposure to the sun.