Using science to combat human suffering
Our research is developing treatment innovations for mental health conditions such as depression and Post Traumatic Stress disorder.¯ Dr Emily Holmes, University of Oxford |
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Dr Emily A Holmes is a Clinical Psychologist with a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience, leading a new team within the University of Oxford's Department of Psychiatry. Her work, within the relatively young field of Cognitive Psychology, is starting to show promise for our understanding of a wide range of psychological disorders, from depression to post-traumatic stress disorder.
A young field of science
Cognitive Psychology is a discipline that seeks to use scientifically rigorous methods to investigate mental processes, to better understand human behaviour and the thought processes that drive it.
Dr Holmes and her Experimental Psychopathology and Cognitive Therapy team are using experimental psychology techniques to understand the mechanisms underlying emotion and psychological disorders, with the aim of developing new therapeutic techniques. These therapy innovations seek to help individuals identify and change distorted or unrealistic ways of thinking, and therefore to influence emotion and behaviour.
Recognising the power of intrusive mental images
Dr Holmes is focusing her research on investigating the roles intrusive mental imagery and biases in our thinking play in emotion. Intrusive images are sensory and especially visual memories that recur without conscious control and can carry high levels of emotion. Such images have an important role in many distressing psychological conditions, for example flashbacks to past traumatic experiences which can be extremely frightening.
We know horribly little about why images pop in to our heads when we donTt want them to. I would like to understand ways to reduce mental images that are distressing. As a research clinical psychologist, I use clinical experience to inform my laboratory research. The key psychological processes I seek to understand are mental imagery and cognitive biases, and my work seeks to develop empirically-driven innovations in cognitive therapy,¯ she explains. We are constantly confronted with ambiguity, and have a bias or filter in the way we process everyday information before we are even aware of it. I want to investigate how we can promote a more positive bias.¯
Many people suffering from conditions such as post traumatic stress disorder report experiencing distressing intrusive images that they just canTt control. My clinical expertise is in trauma memory, with our current work also reaching into depression. Developing new solutions to these problems could mean a future lifeline for the large numbers of people suffering from mental health difficulties.¯
In practice, this means understanding how these intrusive images occur, and how they can be brought under control.
Our projects aim to test recent cognitive theory, which will in turn deliver information to drive future developments in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy ("CBT") innovations for depression, anxiety and suicidality.¯
New kinds of therapy
Dr Holmes believes her research will increase our understanding of psychological difficulties and how to alleviate suffering, hoping this will ultimately provide real benefits for a wide range of people.
We are studying the extent to which it may be possible to train patients to interpret events more positively or in other words to modify their cognitive bias through techniques such as computerised interpretation training. Our early studies have suggested that positive imagery training as opposed to verbal processing may be a useful tool for enhancing such training techniques¯.
She is confident that understanding how imagery and emotion influence disorders such as depression, anxiety and suicidality will provide the groundwork for new methods of treatment. With as many as one in four people suffering from psychological difficulties at some point in their lives, the need for new and effective therapies has never been greater.
Supporting Dr HolmesT work
Dr Emily Holmes is funded by the Royal Society as a Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow. The EPACT Research Group which she leads was set up with the assistance of the ESRC and the John Fell OUP Research Fund.
