"[Giving people a broader temporal perspective removes them from distress at the present time, but also enables them to identify] the reasonable expectation of it [the cause of the stress] coming to an end, all of which are (sic) good for brain health and emotional well-being."
Dr.Roger McIntyre, psychiatry professor, University of Toronto

"It [a psychological therapeutic device to distract people from their state of anxiety and propel their thoughts in a hopeful arc toward the future] activates that sense that, 'this too shall pass, that this may be a really difficult time right now but I can get through difficult times'."
"'There will be a time after this'."
Professor of psychology Anne Wilson, Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo

"I'm worried about my income now because I have less work, but I think I'll be able to live in peace in a year."
"I don't think the hard times will last forever, so I will do my best to prevent COVID-19 so I can laugh a year later."
Self-consoling letter sample

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A study published in the journal Health and Well-being, authored by researchers at Wilfrid Laurier and the Ritsumeikan University in Japan represents a timely and likely useful experiment in lifting peoples' spirits by altering their perspective on the seeming dismal view of life under COVID-19 that just doesn't appear as though it will come to a positive conclusion. It's purpose is meant to lift people away from depression, in an effort to avoid the kind of deep psychological distress people are experiencing from impositions upon their normal lifestyles.

The study was launched for the purpose of recommending to people an approach that they could take as a psychological intervention to help themselves; validating preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of the approach. The idea was to persuade study participants that through the simple medium of addressing their current selves as giving solace and advice to their future selves, a release of tension could ensue. The device, not intrusive while it is at the same time intimate, was seen to have significant benefits.

It would rely, however, on the ability of the study participants to exert a considerable degree of imagination to see themselves in the future and how their current selves could act as mentor and guide to their future selves. Mounting evidence of the psychological impact of the pandemic on people's psyches sending them into a spiral of anxiety and depression spurred the researchers to undertake the study.

According to a survey by the Canadian Mental Health Association and University of British Columbia, 40 percent of respondents felt a deterioration in their emotional well-being in the past year. One in ten admitted having contemplated suicide, as opposed to 2.5 percent having done so prior to the advent of the global pandemic. Mental Health Research Canada released the results of another poll in January which suggested that 22 percent of Canadians were diagnosed with depression while another 20 percent with anxiety; each representing four percentage points steeper than than pre-pandemic time.

Millions have been invested in expanding virtual mental-heatlth care by governments, according to the CMHA survey, yet a mere 11 percent of respondents had taken steps to access the treatment, and 20 percent stated that to cope with pandemic stress they had committed themselves to greater use of alcohol for emotional release of stress. Professor Wilson's post-doctoral fellow, Yuta Chishima led the research, with the use of online crowdsourcing platforms, recruiting roughly750 people in Japan to join the experiment.

Temporal distancing during the COVID‐19 pandemic: Letter writing with future self can mitigate negative affect

Each of the participants was instructed to write a letter of encouragement to themselves as they would imagine themselves to be a year from the present ... alternately from that future person they would become, backward in time to the individual they were at the present time. Assigned to a control group, others wrote simply of the situation they were faced with at the present time. The researchers then measured psychological 'affect' through the emotions of fear, anger, sadness, disgust and happiness.

The analysis published in the journal Health and Well-being highlighted the study result, that those who wrote to the future and those who wrote back from the future both experienced a positive affect increase while the control group saw no improvement in positive affect and heightened negative feelings.