Last Updated on June 5, 2016

A brand new study indicates that how folks react to these events can influence whether they will experience either mental health issue though traumatic life events would be the biggest cause of anxiety or depression. The research, which contemplated survey responses from more than 32,000 participants, was released in PLOS One.

Researchers from the University of Liverpool’s Psychology, Health and Society Institute looked at answers from the 32,000 participants, who answered questions reacting to in school. physical, sexual or mental maltreatment or being bullied a stressful life event, including The survey asked questions about the way the individual answered to the function, whether they experienced other information on family history of mental illness, as well as following anxiety or depression.

The researchers verified that the traumatic life event was the largest trigger of depression or stress, though family history of mental illness was next. This is expected, said study author Peter Kinderman, MD, head of the Institute of Health, Psychology and Society in the University of Liverpool.

“I’m a clinical psychologist — my day-to-day encounter is finding people who’ve been traumatized by things that occur to them,” he said.

The most promising results of the research, however, was the finding that people’s reactions to these occasions were not unable to change whether they had anxiety or got depressed.

People tend to react to traumatic life events by attributing themselves, and ruminating on the event. Ruminating is “thinking over and over again concerning the issue, but not about what they’ll do differently in the future,” Kinderman said. The research unearthed that ruminating was “incredibly unhelpful,” he said. Instead, people experiencing traumatic life events should try adaptive coping, meaning that they proactively try and look to the long run, solving their problems, discussing them and making new strategies.

“How we respond to the events appears to be more significant than whether the event occurred,” Kinderman said. “It’s sort of in your power.”

The research suggests that contrary to a school of thought that assumes folks who’ve an adverse life event occur get depressed and then end up believing more negatively, Kinderman said his study shows that individuals possess an adverse life event occur, they ruminate over it, and then they get depressed and think negatively. The flip, he pointed out, is that people’s negative believing calls melancholy, rather than depression calling negative thinking.

Deb Serani, PsyD, of Living with Depression and writer, said the study suggests that private activities might have a sizable impact in recovering from trauma. “It is not the cards you’re dealt, it is how you play them,” she said.

Serani clarified that negative and rumination thoughts activate the amygdala in the brain, which leads to believing that was circular. On the other hand, positive thinking activates the areas of the brain that produce serotonin and dopamine, two compounds important to happiness.

The most crucial thing a person can do when recovering from a trauma is make an effort to think positively, Serani said. “With exercise, you can genuinely educate yourself to think positively,” she said.

Serani included that regularly when seeing a loved one spiral into rumination following a trauma, it could be difficult for relatives and buddies to give guidance. She advised that in talking to someone who might be thinking negatively following trauma, that loved ones declare that they may be unable to know the way the individual feels, but to encourage them to at least try to think positively to attempt to “break the cycle.”

Kinderman said, researchers were able to control for variables like instruction or income level, as the survey was so big.