Looking forward to the future: Impoverished vividness for positive prospective events characterises low mood in adolescence

Abstract

Background: Enhancing positive future imagery offers promise for treatment innovation in adult depression but has been neglected in adolescence. While negative life events are linked with depression-onset in adolescence, mechanisms underlying this association are poorly understood. We investigate whether difficulties in generating vivid positive future imagery characterise depression, compared to anxiety, and examine potential moderation of the relationship between negative life events and depressive symptoms in adolescence.

Method: Three hundred and seventy-five young people (11-16 years) completed the Prospective Imagery Task, and self-reported on symptoms of anxiety and depression. They were also asked to describe a past negative life event they had been thinking about or imagining over the last seven days, which was subsequently coded by a clinician over whether it was no, low, moderate or high impact.

Results: Symptoms of depression were associated with less vivid positive imagery and more vivid negative imagery whether past or future, whilst symptoms of anxiety were associated with increased vividness for past negative events only. The relationship between life event severity and depression was increased for those with poorer vividness for positive future events.

Limitations: These data were collected at a single time-point only, limiting conclusions on temporal relationships. All measures were also self-reported, increasing shared method variance.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that the relationship between negative life events and prospective positive imagery are specific to depressive symptoms in adolescence and provide foundations for novel approaches to strengthen psychological interventions.

Keywords: Adolescence; Anxiety; Depression; Mental imagery; Prospection.