Cognitive integration of personal or public events affects mental health: Examining memory networks in a case of natural flooding disaster.

Abstract

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. Participants from the general population (N=224, age mean=36.62years, 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 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. 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.