I’m sure we have all heard clients talk about memory difficulties. Many of them even attribute memory problems to having some neurological condition. “It’s because of that time I hit my head pretty hard.” or “I must be getting early onset Alzheimer’s.” In some cases, they may be right. But for most adults (especially in their 60s or younger), this is usually due to established links between memory loss and anxiety, depression, and/or other mental health difficulties.
There are many different mental health difficulties that can affect memory. Depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD, borderline personality disorder, prolonged grief, and other disorders can all make it harder to recall information accurately or at all. But how does this happen?
The reasons for these impacts mainly center around how memory functions. Don’t worry, we won’t get into the deep neurological underpinnings (we’ll keep it totes basic). The basic model of memory describes 3 main steps that often occur in succession:
Encoding -> Storage -> Retrieval
Encoding describes how information is first attended to and placed into memory. Storage is as it sounds: encoded information is stored in memory for later use. Retrieval describes how that information is later retrieved from memory storage and used for whatever purposes.
Attention is a necessary component to encoding. If we cannot pay attention to what is happening in the moment, we will be much less likely to encode information into our memory storage. In step mental health difficulties…. Many difficulties “steal” our attention away and thus make it difficult to encode information into memory in the first place. This is why many disorders are misdiagnosed as ADHD. It is also why older adults often believe they experience early-onset dementia.
There are a few key reasons that these difficulties impact attention. Disorders like major depression, generalized anxiety, and prolonged grief (among others) typically come along with high levels of rumination. Rumination is highly distracting and makes it difficult to pay attention to our environment in-the-moment. This lack of attention in the moment prevents encoding information into memory.
Physical and emotional responses that go along with multiple disorders also come along with high levels of arousal. For example, high arousal when experiencing anxiety or trauma triggers (think fight/flight/freeze response) also distracts one from being present in the moment. This constant distraction can constantly steal one’s attention and prevent encoding information into memory.
Lastly, a number of these difficulties include increased focus on negative information and difficulty paying attention to positive information. Attentional bias makes it hard to pay attention when we often fixate on negative content. This form of bias strengthens the link between memory loss and anxiety or other mental health difficulties
But attention to negative information also biases what individuals encode into memory and later retrieve. Experiences like depression and anxiety typically lead individuals to remember negative information more easily or more easily inaccurately recall neutral information as negative in nature. This is also one reason those with PTSD often recall traumatic memories with details consistent with negative beliefs, but not accurate to what occurred in the moment.
A variety of psychological difficulties negatively impact attention and therefore memory. So what therapist resources do we have to help? Good news! These memory difficulties typically resolve with successful mental health treatment. CBT and other treatments can not only help mood and emotional states, but can also cause associated attention and memory problems to subside. Nice!
