Research

This body of research seeks to address the ways in which individuals develop hopeless expectations about the future and how such expectations might be modified. Drawing upon research by Andersen and colleagues (e.g., Andersen, 1990; Andersen & Limpret, 2001; Andersen, Spielman, & Bargh, 1992), who conceptualize hopelessness in the form of depressive predictive certainty (Andersen, 1990) and on past research suggesting that a ruminative response style exacerbates and maintains symptoms of depression (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991, 2000), we hypothesize that individuals acquire maladaptive mental representations about the future through mental rehearsal, in the form of rumination about the future. In a series of studies, we are examining whether mental rehearsal in considering the future pessimistically leads to increases in depressive predictive certainty among non-depressed individuals. In a related vein, we are examining processes that might ameliorate the depressive certainty that characterizes depression, along with the role that mental rehearsal might play in improving symptoms.

A related line of research seeks to answer the question of what specific cognitive content characterizes hopelessness in depression, with implications for suicidal thinking and behavior, given that hopelessness has been found to predict suicidal behavior, independently of depression (Beck, Brown, & Steer, 1989; Brown et al., 2000). Previous research suggests that depression can be distinguished from anxiety by certainty in the expectation that one will fail to experience both negative future outcomes and that one will experience an absence of positive outcomes in one's future (Miranda & Mennin, 2007). Present research conducted in the lab seeks to answer the question of whether depressive certainty in an absence of positive future outcomes - along with cognitive fluency in anticipating these outcomes - specifically predicts whether an individual will experience suicidal ideation and behavior, so that these specific cognitions might serve as a focus of treatment. Furthermore, we seek to examine the ruminative processes that lead people to become certain in expecting a lack of positive future outcomes - including depressive rumination (see Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000) and future-oriented rumination.

This research is being conducted in collaboration with David Shaffer, MD in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons. We seek to develop better methods of classifying and measuring suicidal ideation among adolescents, along with applying cognitive techniques to assess and track the development of suicide-related schemas among adolescents. Currently, we are conducting a pilot study at Columbia University Medical Center (Principal Investigator: David Shaffer, MD) that seeks to study the contingencies of suicidal thinking among adolescents for the purposes of developing better methods for interviewing teenagers about these events and to develop a measure that can be used to track change and long-term outcome.