Autobiographical Memory in Persons with Psycho-Emotional Disorders During the War

Abstract

The article describes the results  of autobiographical memory problem studying in the context of violations of the emotional sphere of an individual, namely in persons who have different levels of emotional stability during the full-scale war in Ukraine. The peculiarities of autobiographical memory were determined among three clusters of subjects: with high PTSD scores, elevated levels of depression, and without recorded disorders of the emotional sphere. According to the results of the empirical study, a significantly higher level of emotional coloring of the content of the recent past memories was recorded in subjects with high rates of PTSD and depression compared to subjects without disturbances of emotional stability.  Persons with signs of post-traumatic stress disorder reproduce emotionally colored memories in the form of monosyllabic impersonal sentences, avoiding mental immersion in the details of events, while in persons with signs of depression, emotionally colored memories are accompanied by perceptual-image brightness of their content. Individuals with symptoms of PTSD and depression reproduce many emotions when recalling personal experiences, do not ignore personally significant negative and positive events of the past, but focus more on their own emotional experience. In general, in subjects with signs of emotional disorders, generalized, monosyllabic emotional memories prevail in number over perceptually colored ones and are characterized by the fragmentary nature of the content reproduced in them. Subjects without emotional disturbances tend to reproduce detailed and perceptually colored memories during arbitrary reproduction. Individuals without disorders of emotional stability also tend to accompany personal memories with their own reflections and figurative details. Emotionally colored memories are also presented among the subjects of this group, but in small numbers. The most negative memories of the stressful events of the war, which are also accompanied by the reproduction of a complete situation in the subjects without signs of emotional disorders, are distinguished by the emotional saturation of the content. In general, individuals in a state of emotional stability demonstrate acceptance of both positive and stressful life events, which is reflected in the mental coherence of the content of their memories and the integral structure of their autobiographical memory.