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Cognitive integration of personal or public events affects mental health: Examining memory networks in a case of natural flooding disaster
Author(s) -
Philippe Frederick L.,
Houle Iliane
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/jopy.12531
Subject(s) - mental health , psychology , affect (linguistics) , cognition , public health , flood myth , event (particle physics) , demographics , population , natural disaster , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , social psychology , applied psychology , psychiatry , medicine , environmental health , demography , geography , communication , nursing , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics , sociology , meteorology
Objective The purpose of this research was to examine whether memories of personal or public events could affect mental health through the way those memories are integrated in memory networks. Method Participants from the general population ( N = 224, age mean = 36.62 years, 74% female) were either directly or indirectly personally affected by a natural flooding disaster with moderate consequences or had simply learned about it. A prospective design (during the floods and two months later) was used to examine the impact that such a personal or public event memory could have on their mental health. Results Results showed that flood‐affected individuals reported poorer mental health compared to the unaffected. However, both affected and unaffected individuals who had encoded a current floods‐related event in memory as need satisfying or who had embedded such an event in need satisfying memory networks showed better mental health over time. These results held after controlling for the effect of various demographics and dispositional emotion regulation styles. Conclusion Simply learning about public events can impact mental health through the way those events are integrated in memory, which appears as a critical individual difference.