The Effect of Attention Training on Symptoms and Emotion Regulation in Depressive Patients

Attention control for external information and cognitive control for internal information play a causal role in emotion regulation according to different theories and research. Prior research shows that an interactive attention control training in which participants learn to unravel scrambled sentences ("life is my a party mess") in a positive manner ("my life is a party") by receiving feedback on their eye movements while attending to the valenced words, can facilitate participants to be more able to re-interpret negative information in a positive manner. In the current study we want to test the effect of psycho-education in combination with a 10 day attention control training to see if this has a positive effect on depressive, anxiety and stress symptoms, emotion regulation and self-esteem in depressed patients. The study takes place in a psychiatric hospital (Alexianen Zorggroep Tienen) while participants are staying there to receive treatment.