HEALTH PLUS:Looking forward to an event is a simple way of breaking patterns of distress
IT IS important to have something to look forward to. It is a significant mental health strategy: to know that there is something positive that is definitely going to happen.
It does not have to be something momentous. It may be looking forward to a time in the day, to acquiring a desired object, attending an event, enjoying a special food, spending a few minutes alone or having time in the company of someone special.
Having something to look forward to is a real antidote to depression.
If feeling hopeless and thinking that there is nothing worthwhile ahead are key factors in depression, then having something to look forward to is essential.
It is a simple psychological interruption in the pattern of distress and it is one that is much more easily exercised and far more immediately effective than people may think. It is also a useful concept for parents to teach their children about life.
Knowing that something good is going to happen tomorrow helps many people to get through today. The child who has nothing to look forward to is truly miserable.
If school brings no happiness, if home brings no reprieve, if happy future events are unimaginable, then there is little joy and much pain in life.
This is a dangerous place for anyone to inhabit. It needs to be altered by anticipating something good occurring in the future. We look to the horizon for hope. The emotional horizon must contain promise or else we despair.
Just as something immaterial can become "the last straw" and the psychological breaking point, so too can tiny occurrences lift people out of gloom. Unexpected treats remind people that life holds unforeseen gifts.
Adolescents who are suddenly offered a lift to meet their friends, who are collected out of the blue when the weather turns bad, who have their favourite meal prepared for them, or who are occasionally slipped some unexpected euro, will feel cheered by the interest shown in them and in their lives.
Even the balm of kind words and personal praise at the right moment, these seemingly relatively small acts of care, can make a major difference when someone young is feeling down.
Showing an interest, communicating support and providing things to look forward to are genuine therapeutic interventions for depression. In mental-health terms, it is good to keep organising things to look forward to. Those who plan ahead in this way have been found to be less prone to stress and thereby more resistant to depression. They know what nice things lie ahead. Of course, what constitutes "something to look forward to" is as diverse as individuals.
For some, it is being with people. For others, it is time alone. Some savour the thought all day of specific evening entertainment: a TV programme, a film, meeting a friend, or a walk around the block with the dog.
For some, these small daily inducements keep life on an even emotional keel. Others prefer to plan more major future events which is why booking the annual holiday is so important for many people.
Booklovers often get through life emotionally by always having a book to read. They cannot wait to return to the novel, the joy of the text and the unfolding of the story from which they had to extricate themselves.
Author GK Chesterton once said "just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier" and nobody who is immersed in a novel would disagree with him.
For many people, music is their balm: each familiar note changes their heartbeat, alters their respiration and energises them in a special way. They know that once the music surges through them that their cares will disappear.
Some people love to rush up mountains, walk by the sea or be anywhere that is away from urban life. Others like the urban garishness, the noise and hubbub of the city.
Stories of concentration- camp survivors often refer to the tiniest of objects, activities or beliefs that sustained them. They recall how a piece of string, held close and hidden, became personal and precious in that context; something to use imaginatively or practically, something to look forward to which was sufficient to surmount psychologically the most inconceivable suffering in life.
If we wish to help people emotionally and to give them hope, then reminding them that they are important, providing something to reassure them and something to look forward to are simple ways of bringing hope. This is so simple that we often forget that it is not major therapeutic strategies that are required when life seems grim, but the simple strings of hope that are to be found in something to look forward to.
Clinical psychologist and author Marie Murray is the director of Student Counselling Services in UCD.