Date of Award

Fall 11-22-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology (PhD)

Department

Clinical Psychology

First Advisor/Committee Member

Amy H Mezulis

Second Advisor/Committee Member

Keyne Law

Third Advisor/Committee Member

Jaclyn Aldrich

Abstract

Adolescence is a developmental period during which there is a significant increase in depressive symptoms. Both interpersonal and intrapersonal emotion regulation strategies, including co-rumination and rumination, contribute to the development of depressive symptoms. However, there has been relatively little research investigating the connections between co-rumination and rumination and their associations with depression. Theories of depression, such as interpersonal theories and Response Styles Theory suggest that both relational processes and the ways in which an individual responds internally may promote and maintain depressive symptoms. The current study examined whether brooding rumination serves as the mechanism explaining the relationship between co-rumination and depressive symptoms across the course of 8 months. Participants were 150 adolescents (Mage = 13.03 years, 51.3% female). Analyses were performed to determine whether co-rumination predicted depressive symptoms and whether brooding rumination mediated the relationship between co-rumination and depressive symptoms both cross sectionally and longitudinally. Analyses were also performed to determine whether gender moderated the relationships among co-rumination, brooding rumination, and depressive symptoms. Study hypotheses were largely unsupported. Consistent with hypotheses, the indirect effect of co-rumination on depression through brooding rumination was statistically significant cross-sectionally. However, path models demonstrated that co-rumination was not found to predict symptoms across time and that brooding rumination did not mediate the relationship between co-rumination and depressive symptoms across time. Finally, multigroup analyses revealed that the model was not moderated by gender either cross-sectionally or prospectively; girls who engaged in co-rumination were not found to be at heightened risk of developing depressive symptoms. Overall, results suggested that brooding rumination may help to explain the relationship between co-rumination and depressive symptoms proximally or within the same time point. Methodological limitations related to sample size and power may have impacted lack of significant study findings.

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