From October 14 to 19 this year, CCTV record channel broadcast six episodes of documentary "how do we fight depression". Depression has once again become the focus of attention. Obviously, deepening the understanding of depression in theory is the premise of effectively combating depression. Most psychological theories about depression assume that parental behavior plays an important role in the development of adult depression, and that parental rejection of children is the potential impact of adult depression. From these theories, it can be logically inferred that depressed people will remember that their parents have more rejection of themselves and have a more negative impression of their parents than non depressed people.

On this basis, there are many studies. Such studies usually compare the childhood experiences of depressed and non depressed people. Some of the comparative data came from the overall assessment of social workers, and more from individual self-reports. The study found that compared with normal people, depressed people recall that their parents have more refusal behaviors and adopt more negative control methods, such as belittling or manipulating individuals by making individuals feel guilty and anxious. These memory characteristics appear to be unique to depressed people, because anxious people do not have these conditions.

The research of psychologist Bauer shows that the individual's recall effect is affected by the internal and external situations during recall. Among them, mood (more broadly, emotion) is a common and important internal situation. In this way, when an individual is in a certain state of mind, it is easier to recall the corresponding content. Thus, state dependent memory may also paint a specific color on people's past experiences.

In one study, the researchers investigated a large sample for 15 months (lewinsohn & Rosenbaum, 1987). Some of the subjects in the sample had depression in more than a year (it was caused by the subjects in their natural life rather than the research program), while some of the depressed people were not depressed during the research process. The results show that depressed subjects are more likely to report that their parents are cold, refuse them, and their childhood is unfortunate than non depressed subjects. On the surface, this result may verify the existing theory that parents' coldness and indifference are the factors causing individual depression.

However, these negative reports to parents were made when the subjects were depressed. In the non depressed state, the same subjects' descriptions of their childhood and their relationship with their parents could not be distinguished from those who had not been depressed.

Are these people's memories of their childhood affected by state dependent memory? Perhaps, depressed people are more likely to remember depressed things, for their childhood or anything else. If so, even if depressed people's childhood is not more unhappy than anyone else, they are more likely to remember the unhappy side because they are now depressed. Thus, the results of such studies on the relationship between childhood events and depression may be misleading. Although it is not certain that this is the case, however, this possibility cannot be ignored.

When people solve problems, they need to extract effective information flexibly. However, if the emotional state or the whole psychological state is inappropriate, it is difficult to extract appropriate information, so that the thinking and research problems are at a standstill. At this time, it is beneficial to change the environment so that other possible information can be extracted.

In other words, the relationship between emotional state and memory bias, as well as other broader situations. For example, people will form a method to solve problems, but this method will sometimes be ineffective and sometimes not as good as other methods. However, people may blindly stick to the same ideas or procedures. People have this experience. When they are puzzled, it is good to have a rest, but it is better to have a thorough rest, such as taking a walk in the forest. Perhaps, the effect of such environmental change is to break the invalid thinking route, which has a strong connection with specific situations and emotions, which is the situation in which individuals encounter difficulties. Going to an environment where there is no strong connection may fully weaken the original connection, so that innovative ideas can appear in the mind.

In short, people living in society need to have normal psychological functions, including normal memory ability. Although many individuals think their memory ability is not as good as before, generally speaking, people are quite confident in their memory ability. For example, the content they can remember must be true, reliable and credible. However, psychological research shows that the memory content reported by individuals may be false or biased. These false or biased contents may cause serious consequences, at least affect the individual's work effectiveness and quality of life, for example, make the individual easy or not easy to produce depression.