Emotion Regulation Predicts Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents: A Prospective Study.

Emotion regulation as a proximal factor has been linked with depressive symptoms. However, studies have mainly focused on a limited number of strategies and have mostly been cross-sectional in design. This is particularly evident when examining the protective effects of adaptive strategies. This study aimed to investigate the prospective relationship between putatively adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies and depressive symptoms among adolescents. Additionally, a person-oriented approach was applied to identify latent classes of adolescents based on their depressive symptoms and compared these classes in terms of their adaptive and maladaptive strategies. Two waves of data from a prospective study, which included 1371 youth (mean age: 15.66 years; SD = 0.49 years; 55.1% girls), were analysed. The two points of data collection were spaced approximately half a year apart. Depressive symptoms were measured using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, and putatively adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies were assessed with the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. Seven strategies (acceptance, positive refocusing, positive reappraisal, putting into perspective, self-blame, rumination, and catastrophizing) were categorised into adaptive and maladaptive factors using exploratory structural equation modeling. After controlling for gender, age, and depressive symptoms at Time 1, both maladaptive and adaptive emotion regulation strategies at Time 1 predicted depressive symptoms at Time 2. Three subgroups emerged based on the intensity of depressive symptoms across the waves: the stable low, stable moderate, and stable high depressive symptom groups. The use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (such as rumination, self-blame, and catastrophizing) at Time 1 was more pronounced in the stable moderate and high symptom groups compared to the stable low depressive symptom group. The comparable prospective associations between putatively adaptive and maladaptive strategies with symptoms suggest the need to identify factors that may mitigate the negative impact of maladaptive emotion regulation and/or promote adaptive emotion regulation to buffer the effects of everyday stressors.

Associations between daily affective experiences, trait and daily rumination on negative and positive affect: a diary study.

BACKGROUND: Rumination has mostly been studied in relation to depression, however, it may also occur in response to positive emotions (i.e., positive rumination) and therefore may be a protective factor related to the maintenance of positive mood. OBJECTIVE: We hypothesized that daily positive and negative affect would be associated with daily positive and negative rumination even after controlling for trait-level rumination. METHOD: We carried out a diary study with university students (n = 178), where participants had to answer short surveys online about their daily affect and daily rumination every evening for 10 days. We analyzed our data with multilevel regression in R. RESULTS: Daily positive and negative affect were significantly associated with daily negative and positive rumination, while trait-level rumination scores were not. Daily and trait-level rumination were moderately correlated (r = 0.333-0.440). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings highlight that daily rumination plays a more significant role in daily emotional experiences than trait rumination across positive and negative valence domains. Daily negative affect appears to be more closely related to higher daily negative rumination than the lack of daily positive rumination, which could be relevant for intervention strategies.

Emotion-focused coping mediates the relationship between COVID-related distress and compulsive buying.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: COVID-19 posits psychological challenges worldwide and has given rise to nonadaptive behavior, especially in the presence of maladaptive coping. In the current study, we assessed whether the relationship between COVID-related distress and compulsive buying is mediated by task-focused and emotion-focused coping. We also examined whether these associations were invariant over time as the pandemic unfolded. METHODS: Self-report surveys were administered online in the United States in the first six months of the pandemic (March-October 2020) in sampling batches of 25 participants every three days, resulting in a total sample of N = 1,418 (40% female, mean age = 36.6). We carried out structural equation modeling to assess whether the relationship between distress related to COVID-19 and compulsive buying is mediated by task-focused and emotion-focused coping. Time was used as a grouping variable based on events related to the pandemic in the U.S. to calculate model invariance across three time periods. RESULTS: The results indicated significant mediation between distress, emotion-focused coping, and compulsive buying, but not between task-focused coping and compulsive buying. The mediation model showed excellent fit to the data (χ² = 1119.377, df = 420, RMSEA = 0.059 [0.055-0.064], SRMR = 0.049, CFI = 0.951, TLI = 0.947). Models were not invariant across the three examined time periods. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that compulsive buying is more likely to occur in relation to emotion-focused coping as a response to COVID-related distress than in relation to task-focused coping, especially during periods of increasing distress. However, model paths varied during the course of the pandemic.

The neural correlates of context driven changes in the emotional response: An fMRI study.

Emotional flexibility reflects the ability to adjust the emotional response to the changing environmental context. To understand how context can trigger a change in emotional response, i.e., how it can upregulate the initial emotional response or trigger a shift in the valence of emotional response, we used a task consisting of picture pairs during functional magnetic resonance imaging sessions. In each pair, the first picture was a smaller detail (a decontextualized photograph depicting emotions using primarily facial and postural expressions) from the second (contextualized) picture, and the neural response to a decontextualized picture was compared with the same picture in a context. Thirty-one healthy participants (18 females; mean age: 24.44 ± 3.4) were involved in the study. In general, context (vs. pictures without context) increased activation in areas involved in facial emotional processing (e.g., middle temporal gyrus, fusiform gyrus, and temporal pole) and affective mentalizing (e.g., precuneus, temporoparietal junction). After excluding the general effect of context by using an exclusive mask with activation to context vs. no-context, the automatic shift from positive to negative valence induced by the context was associated with increased activation in the thalamus, caudate, medial frontal gyrus and lateral orbitofrontal cortex. When the meaning changed from negative to positive, it resulted in a less widespread activation pattern, mainly in the precuneus, middle temporal gyrus, and occipital lobe. Providing context cues to facial information recruited brain areas that induced changes in the emotional responses and interpretation of the emotional situations automatically to support emotional flexibility.

Validating the bifactor structure of the Ruminative Thought Style Questionnaire-A psychometric study.

The Ruminative Thought Style Questionnaire (RTSQ) is a self-report measure that aims to capture rumination globally, unbiased by depressive symptoms. We explored its psychometric properties among university students (N = 1123), as the existing models about the factor structure of the RTSQ have been inconclusive. In a second study (N = 320) we tested its convergent validity compared to the Ruminative Response Scale (RRS) and its construct validity compared to the Zung Self-rating Depression Scale (ZSDS). The results of Study 1 suggest that the factor structure of the RTSQ is best described with a 19-item bifactor Exploratory Structural Equation Modelling (ESEM), where most of the variance is explained by the general factor. The model was found to be invariant across genders. The correlations in Study 2 demonstrated that the RTSQ is congruent with the RRS, and that rumination captured by the RTSQ is rather maladaptive, as it was more strongly associated with the brooding subscale of the RRS than with reflective pondering. Significant positive associations were found with depressive symptoms, reaffirming the validity of the RTSQ due to the well-known association between rumination and depressive symptoms. Our results support that RTSQ assesses rumination globally, and it is a valid measure of ruminative thinking style that is rather negatively valenced but does not solely focus on depressive mood and symptoms.

Perceived stress in the time of COVID-19: the association with brooding and COVID-related rumination in adults with and without migraine.

BACKGROUND: The main goal of this research was to explore whether migraineurs had a higher level of perceived stress than healthy controls during the times of the coronavirus and related restrictive measures, and to examine the relationship between different subtypes of rumination and perceived stress in these groups. We measured two facets of depressive rumination, brooding and reflection, along with rumination about the current COVID-19 situation to see whether these different subtypes of rumination explained perceived stress among migraineurs and healthy controls. METHODS: Healthy adults (n = 64) and migraine patients (n = 73) filled out self-report questionnaires online. A multiple linear regression model was used to test whether depressive rumination (i.e. brooding and reflection) and COVID-related rumination explained perceived stress among adults with and without migraine during the times of COVID-19, after controlling for gender, age, migraine/control group status and migraine disability. RESULTS: Although we did not find any difference in the level of perceived stress among migraineurs and the control group, perceived stress was more strongly associated with brooding as well as COVID-related rumination among migraineurs than healthy controls. COVID-related rumination and brooding (but not reflection) explained the level of perceived stress after controlling for gender, age, migraine/control group status and migraine disability. CONCLUSIONS: The similar degree of perceived stress among migraineurs and the control group may imply that there is great variation in the personal experience of people regarding the pandemic, that may be determined by numerous other factors. Our results demonstrate that ruminating about the pandemic and related difficulties, as well as brooding (but not reflection) appear to be associated with higher level of perceived stress during the times of the coronavirus. This association was slightly stronger among migraineurs, hinting at the increased vulnerability of this patient group in stressful situations like the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results also suggest that ruminating about the pandemic and its consequences is weakly associated with trait-level depressive rumination, thus may be more contingent on specific factors.

Rumination in major depressive and bipolar disorder - a meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: rumination, defined as repetitive thoughts about emotionally relevant experiences, has been linked extensively with mood disorders, especially major depressive disorder (MDD).1 However, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting the importance of rumination in bipolar disorder (BD)2 as well. METHODS: we searched for studies that investigated rumination in both BD and MDD in four databases. Our systematic search identified 12 studies with an overall sample size of 2071 clinical patients. RESULTS: results demonstrated no significant difference in the ruminative tendencies of the two patient groups when all rumination measures were included. We tested for the effect of rumination subtype, BD subgroups, and the current mood state of BD and MDD patients. There were no significant differences in terms of depressive rumination, however, BD patients reported more rumination on positive affect. This difference remained significant when examining in BD-I3 and BD-II4 patient groups, with similar effect sizes. LIMITATIONS: due to the lack of sufficient data in the literature, only a few self-report studies qualified to be included in our analysis. Thus additional moderating factors, such as the current mood state of the two patient groups could not be analyzed. CONCLUSIONS: this review demonstrates that rumination is a significant process in both MDD and BD, highlighting the importance of interventions to reduce rumination in mood disorders. The two patient groups share several commonalities in terms of rumination, however, rumination subtype was found to be an important moderating variable underlining a difference in rumination on positive affect.