Title: Understanding Repetitive Negative Thinking as a Pathway to Building Resilience in Young People
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Mental ill-health presents a significant burden for the individual, severely impacting health, wellbeing and future prospects, resulting in a substantial societal burden. Mental health problems typically originate in adolescence and persist into adulthood. Unfortunately however, much of our research and understanding (and national mental health research spend) is directed at adult populations, leaving this vital life-stage of emotional vulnerability subject to substantial gaps in knowledge. Improving adolescent mental health is likely to lead to an enhanced quality of life and improves the overall well-being of society, both now and in the future. It is therefore important that research, such as that proposed here, can illuminate the cognitive basis for resilience to mental ill-health. The proposed research will investigate the relationship between two connected aspects of adolescent mental ill-health; repetitive negative thinking, and affective flexibility. Repetitive negative thinking (RNT), which is typified by constant worry and rumination is very common in mental ill-health and is important across many different mental health conditions, e.g. depression and anxiety. RNT is characterised by uncontrolled, excessive, and repetitive thoughts. The novelty of our project is the focus on affective flexibility, which is the ability to flexibly process emotional information and perform cognitive tasks efficiently in the presence of emotional information. This is essential to protect against repetitive negative thinking. Our hope is that improving affective flexibility may plausibly act as a boost to psychological resilience against mental ill-health. This research will employ a range of methods in order to gain a more complete picture of how affective flexibility influences repetitive negative thinking and consequently, mental-ill health. Computerised cognitive tasks will be used to determine individual differences in affective flexibility. Electroencephalography (EEG) will be used to provide an account of the brain activity involved in the processing of emotional information. We will also obtain, a detailed picture of adolescents' daily emotional landscape, including emotional reactions to life events, current ruminative and worrisome thoughts, and mood by undertaking Ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Using many techniques together allows us to investigate how cognitive and affective processing influences RNT under laboratory conditions as well as in natural contexts. The fact that we are obtaining measures on several differnen levels will give us a more detailed indication of how these processes are linked. Three research studies are planned in this project. In study 1 we will test whether induced RNT causes impairments in affective flexibility in a laboratory setting. In study 2 we will investigate naturally occurring RNT over a 1-year period in adolescence and assess its relationship to naturally occuring changes in affective flexibility. Study 3 will pilot a task designed to modify affective flexibility to determine if it is indeed possible to change, and probe subsequent influences on RNT. Our research will help cultivate an account of the development of cognitive-affective processing and RNT in order to build our understanding of the development of mental ill-health in adolescence. The impact of mental ill-health is not unique to the UK and so, in turn, this research will be of direct relevance and use to a much wider community of researchers and mental health practitioners. Our research and the tasks that we develop will be shared with a wide community, including mental health researchers and practitioners, so that they can benefit from the knowledge generated. We will also engage secondary school students with a range of engagement activities to foster understanding and awareness about mental ill-health in adolescence.


Research activity codes: 2.1 BIOLOGICAL AND ENDOGENOUS FACTORS;2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH