Mindset and Depression
Maybe Bernard Loiseau, the French chef was just depressed. Were you thinking that?
As a psychologist and an educator. I am vitally interested in depression It runs wild on college campuses, especially in February and March. The winter is not over, the summer is not in sight, work has piled up, and relationships are often frayed. Yet it's been clear to me for a long time that different students handle depression in dramatically different ways. Some let everything slide Others, though feeling wretched, hang on They drag themselves to class, keep up with their work, and take care of themselves so that when they feel better, their lives are intact,
Not long ago, we decided to see whether mindsets play a role in this difference. To find out we measured students' mindsets and then had them keep an online "diary" for three weeks in February and March. Every day they answered questions about their mood, their activities, and how they were coping with problems Here's what we discovered
First, the students with the fixed mindset had higher levels of depression Our analyses showed that this was because they ruminated over their problems and setbacks, essentially tormenting themselves with the idea that the setbacks meant they were incompetent or unworthy "It just kept circulating in my head. You're a dope." "I just couldn't let go thought that this made me less of a man." Again, failures labeled them and left them no route to success of the
And the more depressed they felt, the more they let things go, the less they took action to solve their problems. For example, they didn't study what they needed to, they didn't hand in their assignments on time, and they didn't keep up with their chores.
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