ArticleScience advances2023
Improving mental health by training the suppression of unwanted thoughts.
Article in Science advances, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 54 citations in OpenAlex.
- Efficacy of stimulus discrimination training for reducing unwanted memories in student journalists.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Trial
- The protective role of memory suppression in psychological resilience among young adults with childhood trauma.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Circuit-informed modulation of traumatic memory in PTSD: integrating extinction, suppression, and reconsolidation.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Review
- Modulating effect of positive emotion arousal on inhibition of return in schizophrenia.BMC psychiatry · 2026Article
- Obsessive-compulsive symptoms predict increased fronto-parahippocampal synchronisation during thought suppression.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Self-distancing is positively related to higher scores during U.S. Army (USA) Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) advanced leadership training.Military psychology : the official journal of the Division of Military Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2026Article
- Learning from imagined experiences via an endogenous prediction error.Nature communications · 2025Article
- The effectiveness and adaptiveness of suppressing unwanted thoughts.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Review
- Controlling unwanted memories: A conceptual review grounded in the process model of emotion regulation.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Review
- Longitudinal Association Among Sleep Problems and Depressive Symptoms: Within-Person Mediated Effect of Thought Suppression.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2025Article
- How does the brain remember? Distinct pathways for voluntary and involuntary recall.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Brain mechanisms underlying the inhibitory control of thought.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Effects of odor-induced autobiographical memory recall interventions on the mental health of individuals with problem drinking behaviors.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Neural correlates of suppressing and imagining future threat.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Momentary mindfulness versus distraction coping messages to reduce cannabis craving among young adults: A microrandomized trial.Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors · 2025Article
- Plasticity of human resilience mechanisms.Science advances · 2025Article
- Inhibitory control in addictive behaviors: is there room for memory suppression?Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Study on the effects of exercise intervention combined with virtual reality technology on emotions and brain networks in secondary school students with depressive symptoms.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- The mediating role of positive feelings in the association between adaptation to disability and positive emotional well-being in a sample of students with congenital physical disabilities.Discover mental health · 2024Article
- Neurobiology and systems biology of stress resilience.Physiological reviews · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Anxiety, posttraumatic stress, and depression markedly increased worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. People with these conditions experience distressing intrusive thoughts, yet conventional therapies often urge them to avoid suppressing their thoughts because intrusions might rebound in intensity and frequency, worsening the disorders. In contrast, we hypothesized that training thought suppression would improve mental health. One hundred and twenty adults from 16 countries underwent 3 days of online training to suppress either fearful or neutral thoughts. No paradoxical increases in fears occurred. Instead, suppression reduced memory for suppressed fears and rendered them less vivid and anxiety provoking. After training, participants reported less anxiety, negative affect, and depression with the latter benefit persisting at 3 months. Participants high in trait anxiety and pandemic-related posttraumatic stress gained the largest and most durable mental health benefits. These findings challenge century-old wisdom that suppressing thoughts is maladaptive, offering an accessible approach to improving mental health.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.