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How is Anxiety Involved in the Longitudinal Relationship between Brooding Rumination and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents?

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Abstract

A growing body of research supports the application of Response Styles Theory to adolescent populations. Although the essential dynamic, namely that rumination increases the incidence of depressive symptoms, has been demonstrated among adolescents, a number of important empirical questions remain, such as: what are the gender differences and developmental trends for brooding and reflective rumination?; does a reciprocal relationship exist between brooding or reflective rumination, on the one hand, and depressive symptoms and anxiety, on the other hand, over time? and how do additional variables (i.e., anxiety) impact upon the rumination-depressive symptoms relationship? In this study, self-reported levels of rumination (both brooding and reflective), and anxious and depressive symptoms were measured longitudinally across 4 months in a sample of 976 community adolescents (46 % females), aged 11–16 years old. Mean group differences showed that female adolescents reported engaging in more brooding rumination than male adolescents beginning at 13 years of age. A reciprocal brooding rumination to depressive symptoms relationship and a reciprocal brooding rumination to anxiety relationship were found over time, and they did not differ for boys and girls. We tested the possibility that anxious symptoms would function as a third variable, but the obtained model showed that brooding rumination and anxiety both contributed unique variance in predicting changes in depressive symptoms over time.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank both the schools and children who participated in this research. We would also like to thank the School of Psychology and the Science Faculty from Victoria University for financial support.

Author Contributions

P.J. and K.W. conceived and designed the study; K.W. collected, coded, and cleaned the data; both P.J. and K.W. analyzed the data; K.W. drafted the manuscript, both K.W. and P.J. contributed to writing the manuscript, and P.J. wrote the final versions. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Author notes

  1. Kirsty F. Weir

    Present address: Ako Aotearoa, National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence, Wellington, New Zealand

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington, 6012, New Zealand

    Paul E. Jose & Kirsty F. Weir

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  1. Paul E. Jose
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Correspondence to Paul E. Jose.

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Jose, P.E., Weir, K.F. How is Anxiety Involved in the Longitudinal Relationship between Brooding Rumination and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents?. J Youth Adolescence 42, 1210–1222 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-012-9891-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-012-9891-3

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