Future episodic thinking refers to the ability to imagine oneself in the future and project oneself into specific future events. This cognitive process is related to decision making and planning for the future. Although healthy populations commonly project themselves into the future (e.g. while planning a trip or career), patients with mood disorders show impairment in this ability. In this review article, we discuss the similarities and differences in future thinking among the following populations: major depressive disorder, dysphoria, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Importantly, we highlight the methodological variations in future episodic memory tasks in the literature that may explain the differences in the existing results.

Episodic future thinking refers to the ability to travel forward in time to pre-experience an event. Although future thinking has been intimately linked with self and identity, to our knowledge, no prior research has compared episodic future thinking in populations with different substance use disorders. This study investigates whether there are differences in episodic future thinking between these alcohol and opiate users. The study recruited participants who were on the opiate substitution program (n = 31) and individuals who had been diagnosed with alcohol dependence (n = 21) from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Drug and Health Services. Healthy controls (n = 23) were recruited via Royal Prince Alfred Hospital databases and the general community. Past and future thinking was measured using four cue words. After each cue word, participants rated their phenomenological experience (e.g. emotion, reliving experience). Results indicated that alcohol-dependent individuals performed significantly higher in episodic future thinking compared to opiate users. These findings indicate that not all substance use disorder groups share similar episodic thinking capabilities. Our results suggest that the self-projection component of rehabilitation programs may have to be tailored to the different episodic construction abilities found in substance use disorder groups.

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