Last month, a student emailed me to explain that because of various stressful circumstances, he was struggling to focus and to complete his coursework. I wrote back to grant an extension, to direct him to various resources, and to acknowledge that stress, trauma, anxiety, and depression can certainly impair attention.
But what about the other way around? Do attention difficulties impact mental health? And can training attention skills reduce mental health problems?
Attention Challenges Extend Beyond ADD/ADHD
It’s common to experience difficulties with attention. Just as you’re trying to get some work done, you might remember another task. Or maybe your phone pings with an email or a text. Just coping with the complexity of modern life—tracking bills, meal planning, cleaning, earning money, understanding current events, and maintaining relationships—lends itself to a rather scattered mental experience.
Difficulties with attention emerge within various mental health issues. People managing anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or eating disorders often struggle with shifting attention away from specific concerns towards other thoughts and activities. Some people experience both distraction and hyperfocus; that is, difficulty disengaging from mental activity when it’s time to shift attention.
If you find it hard to manage attention, you might ask, “Do I have ADD/ADHD?” Many people do find that the ADD/ADHD diagnosis reflects their experience, and they benefit from resources that address it. But although a categorical “yes or no; I either have it or I don’t” view of ADD/ADHD is prevalent, that perspective reflects convention and convenience rather than the actual science. The evidence shows a continuous, dimensional distribution of attention issues across populations.
Attentional Control and Mental Health
How much control do you have over your attention? It’s rare to experience absolute control. Life is unpredictable, and our minds are complex. But having greater attentional control is associated with the ability to regulate emotions and with better mental health.
Attentional control—the ability to focus your attention and to re-direct attention when it wanders—remains challenging for many people, both those with ADD/ ADHD and even those who without. Higher levels of attentional control are associated with the ability to regulate emotions and to experiencing better mental health.
Rumination, or repetitive thinking about negative events, is inversely related to attentional control. During episodes of rumination, it often feels like you can’t stop thinking about a certain problem or issue. In certain situations, a great deal of attention towards an issue is necessary to handle a crisis or solve a problem. But rumination usually has a quality of being stuck, like you’re traversing the same mental territory over and over again, without experiencing effective problem solving or self-regulation. And sometimes rumination masquerades as valuable processing or problem-solving time, even when it isn’t.
How Can You Improve Attention?
As children, most of us were exhorted to “pay attention!” However, few of us were taught exactly how to pay attention. Fortunately, there are several ways to improve attentional control.
Researchers have identified various methods of improving attentional control including adaptive cognitive training. Cognitive training has been shown to improve attention with specific programs and populations. However, a large-scale analysis of over 60,000 individuals indicates that cognitive training (“brain training”) programs do not improve attention in the general population.
You can improve attention over time through your own daily behaviors, including increasing physical exercise, reducing smartphone use and multitasking, and practicing meditation.
Physical exercise improves emotional control and reduces rumination, which then leads to less depression. Some of the effects seem to occur during exercise itself. If you’re playing basketball or learning a new dance routine, you’re working hard to pay attention, and it becomes more difficult to ruminate. But an exercise routine also improves overall attention beyond the actual moments when you’re exercising. Physical fitness, including strength, endurance, flexibility, and coordination, is positively associated with attention.
Another way to improve attention is to modify phone use and multi-tasking. Smartphones impact attention and working memory, and smartphone use is related to less attentional control. Media multi-tasking appears to be indirectly related to depression and anxiety because it impairs attentional control and draws attention to negative information. Even short breaks from media use can shift mental habits.
Mindfulness-based interventions are often effective in improving overall attention, ADD/ADHD, emotion regulation, rumination, and mental health. Many beginners become upset at how much the mind wanders during mediation. But the hard work of meditation involves bringing the mind back, over and over. The repeated effort of shifting your attention during meditation decreases rumination and improves mental health.
During moments of stress, it can feel daunting to plan more physical exercise, to begin meditating, or to change your phone habits. However, investing in one or more of those methods can boost attention over time.
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