Psychologists Stopped Treating Depression's Sadness, And Saw Great Results

"It’s not enough to take away the bad."

When you think of conditions like depression, you might think of periods of intense sadness.

That can certainly be a part of it. But depression can manifest in other ways, too, including anhedonia, where you feel numb and devoid of many feelings at all.

Anhedonia “has been recognised as a critical feature of major depressive disorder,” affecting as many as 90% of those with depression, recent research published in JAMA Network Open found.

Treatment for depression has typically focused on reducing negative emotions, but hasn’t really addressed anhedonia.

Some people with mental illnesses like depression have said they were more interested in feeling positive emotions than they were in stopping the negative ones completely.

So, to help test that theory, researchers looked into positive affect treatment (also known as........

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