• Posted August 27, 2025

Drowning In Chaos? A New Mindset Can Protect Against Depression, Stress

Struggling to cope with today’s catastrophe-filled world?

Changing your mindset can help protect you from the stress caused by disease outbreaks, wildfires, earthquakes, political uproars and traumatic life events, researchers say.

People given a one-hour class in shifting their mindset — to see growth opportunities amidst chaos — wound up with lower levels of depression and stress months later, researchers report in the October issue of the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity.

“We would have liked to avoid the COVID-19 pandemic, but it came regardless,” said senior researcher Alia Crum, an associate professor of psychology at Stanford University in California.

“In the post-pandemic era, we face a choice: We can let it recede into memory, leaving us depleted and disillusioned, or we can choose to look back, learn from it, and grow – both personally and collectively,” Crum said in a news release.

Mindsets are the core beliefs, attitudes and assumptions that serve as a foundation for how people see and engage with the world, researchers said in background notes. These mental “lenses” can dramatically change how events affect a person.

For the study, the research team tested the potential of altering a person’s mindset by showing two groups different videos.

In all, 226 people were shown videos explaining how mindsets can be powerful drivers of health and well-being, highlighting the ways that people can grow from catastrophic experiences like the COVID pandemic.

For example, some who lived through the pandemic developed a greater appreciation for life, better resilience, stronger relationships and deeper spiritual faith, the video said. They also were able to pursue new opportunities that would not have otherwise been possible.

Another 153 people acted as a control group and were shown a video about different phases of the COVID pandemic.

After viewing the videos, those in the mindset group were asked to write about their current thoughts regarding the long-term impact of the pandemic and potential areas of growth they might pursue. The control group answered questions testing their knowledge of the pandemic.

Three months later, those who underwent mindset training had lower levels of depression compared to the control group, results showed. They also had lower levels of an inflammatory marker linked to chronic stress and disease.

“As much as we might wish to live untouched by trauma or catastrophe, the reality is that few of us are spared from such struggle,” Crum said.

However, cultivating a mindset is not the same as blind positive thinking, researchers emphasized. Participants were not asked to ignore the disaster wrought by the pandemic.

“We tried to be very nuanced and balanced but also bring in the genuine, research-based evidence that there are specific positive changes that a lot of people do go through when they live through something like the pandemic,” co-lead researcher Jesse Barrera, former lab manager of the Stanford Mind & Body Lab, said in a news release.

Although more research is needed, these results provide hope for people wrestling with challenging or traumatic life events, Crum said.

“The study was inspired by our desire to help people reflect on their experience of the pandemic with an eye on how it could help them grow,” she said.

More information

Utah State University has more on mindset.

SOURCES: Stanford University, news release, Aug. 26, 2025; Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, October 2025