The Relationship between Working Memory and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents and Relevant Interventions

Abstract

Major depressive disorder can have a serious negative impact on the cognitive functioning of adolescents, while most existing research focused on the biological, genetic and social factors of major depressive disorder. Working memory is a system related to the manipulation of short-term memory and is part of what constitutes human cognition. The current study reviewed the recent studies exploring the relationship between working memory and major depressive disorder in adolescents and related applications for treatment. As a result, in general, the ability of working memory was negatively associated with major depression, accompanied by negative correlations between it with various relevant factors and depressive symptoms. Also, intervening the working memory could alleviate major depression in adolescents. This paper only provided a generalized discussion regarding the relationship between working memory and depressive symptoms, while the interactions and specific associations of internal systems of working memory with depressive symptoms are expected to be confirmed in the future research. This review can contribute to future research on the relationship between specific working memory systems and mood disorders from a cognitive psychology perspective. It can also provide some suggestions to the design of prevention and intervention programs for depression at schools.