The Specificity of Autobiographical Memory and Imageability of the Future

Many suicidal patients report that they have difficulty in imagining any kind of future. Doctors speculate that how we retrieve our past memories may effect the way we imagine or predict the future. Therefore some depressed or suicidal patients may be suffering as a result of poor memory retrieval. In this document, three studies with clinical results explore the possibility of improving positive future planning through changing the memory retrieval process.