Lian Parry's research will focus on how
treatments for PTSD sufferers, including
reliving the traumatic event in a therapeutic
setting, may benefit those suffering from
depression.
Image: iStockphoto

Imagine, for a moment, that you have experienced a deeply traumatic event. As the months and years pass, however, your memory of that event is as strong as ever; time is not healing your wounds.

Worse still, instead of the event fading into your distant past, you keep replaying the event in your mind, over and over. You’re not trying to do it, not trying to remember it, it’s just there — always at the back of your mind, ready to make a reappearance; unasked, and unwanted.

Those thoughts are called intrusive memories.

They are where people who survive traumatic events often relive the experience over and over again. Intrusive memories are often associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but recent studies suggest that intrusive memories of important negative past events may also occur for people with depression.

Now a study by doctoral researcher Lian Parry, from the Department of Psychology, is investigating the nature and treatment of intrusive memories across depression and PTSD. She is considering whether a treatment commonly used for PTSD — exposure therapy — might also benefit those suffering from depression. On average, one in five people will experience depression in their lifetime. Any treatment that makes an impact will offer hope to many thousands of Australians.

Although early research into the use of exposure therapy for depression has been promising, further studies are required to better understand under what circumstances, and for which depressive presentations, this therapeutic approach may be warranted.

“One of the key features of PTSD is a sense of re-experiencing the traumatic event as if it were happening in the present,” says Ms Parry. “So, for example, the car crash you went through years ago might replay in your mind as if it were happening now — that’s an intrusive memory.

“My study is hoping to clarify how these memories in people with depressive symptoms resemble the intrusive memories of trauma survivors. If intrusive memories across both groups are similar, this might suggest that types of therapy currently available for PTSD sufferers might also be useful for people with depression.”

One common form of treatment for those suffering PTSD is exposure therapy.

“Exposure therapy helps people to confront feared memories or situations in a gradual and supported way,” explains Ms Parry.

“In doing so, people are able to process their memories and develop new meaning about their experiences. Over time, while people may still experience intrusive memories, they become better able to manage them and are no longer as distressed or impaired by them.”

Ms Parry is calling on people from the Canberra region aged between 18 and 65 to take part in her study. Participants need to have symptoms of depression or have experienced a traumatic event more than one month ago, and which continues to cause psychological distress. She is also inviting healthy adults, without a history of psychological illness, to participate in her study as part of her control group.

The study is being conducted at ANU. Participants are asked to complete some questionnaires, as well as write about and listen to descriptions of their memories of negative life events as part of the project’s second stage.