Mental Health News

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It was found in recently released results from a study performed by the University of Colorado that it’s possible with effort for people to make themselves forget about troubling or traumatic images.  This has some implications for the mental health recovery of victims of violent crimes and traumatic experiences. 

However, it seems that the events the test subjects were asked to forget about were on the same par with many of the same experiences that can cause anxiety depression and post traumatic stress syndrome.  During the test volunteers were given two images simultaneously, one was traumatic; usually an image of a car wreck or wounded soldiers and the other was the picture of a person.  The researchers repeatedly showed the volunteers two corresponding pictures so that the volunteers would associate the image of the person with the traumatic event.  Later on in the study, volunteers were only shown the image of the person in the hopes that the association created by researchers would cause the volunteer to remember the traumatic image in a kind of mild clinical Post traumatic stress response. 

The researchers were able to achieve the association with several volunteers and from there they started trying to undo the association!  Researchers showed the volunteers a picture of a person with the corresponding association and then simply told them to forget about the traumatic image it brought up.  It appears to have worked and after awhile the volunteers had trouble placing the person’s image with its corresponding traumatic event.  So mental health recovery for victims suffering from traumatic memories could be as easy as telling them to forget?

Though, it seems that a lot of the results could just be from a natural tendency to forget the related image after a while.  Plus the traumatic image isn’t the same as experiencing a traumatic event.