Abstract
Rumination and worry are vulnerability factors involved in the early development of depression and anxiety during adolescence, particularly in girls. Current views conceptualize rumination and worry as transdiagnostic forms of repetitive negative thinking (RNT). However, most of research has analyzed them separately, without considering gender differences. We analyzed common and specific roles of rumination and worry in accounting for depressive and anxiety symptom levels overall and as a function of gender in adolescents (N = 159). Rumination and worry items were loaded into separate RNT factors. Girls showed a higher use of rumination and worry and higher levels of depression and anxiety than boys. Structural equation modeling supported that both RNT factors accounted for gender differences in symptom levels: rumination was the strongest mediator for depression and worry the strongest mediator for anxiety. Our findings support both general and specific contributions of RNT to account for affective symptomatology during adolescence, particularly in girls.
Highlights
Adolescence is a crucial developmental period, involving a profound amount of change in all individual domains: biological, cognitive, psychosocial, and emotional
Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) can take the form of rumination (Nolen-Hoeksema et al, 2008) and/ or excessive worry (Borkovec et al, 1983), two forms of unproductive RNT that have been typically related to depression and anxiety disorders, respectively
We evaluated different forms of RNT, both rumination and worry, as well as depression and generalized anxiety levels in a non-clinical sample of adolescents in order to (a) determine common and specific dimensions of RNT processes of rumination and worry and its general contribution to anxiety and depression in adolescence, in line with previous research (Muris et al, 2004) while (b) determining gender differences that can emerge in such RNT pro‐ cesses and examining their role in accounting for gender differences in depres‐ sion and anxiety levels in adolescents with ages ranging between 12 and 17 years
Summary
Adolescence is a crucial developmental period, involving a profound amount of change in all individual domains: biological, cognitive, psychosocial, and emotional. Despite the differences in terms of their content (past- vs future-oriented), rumi‐ nation and worry present multiple formal commonalities (i.e., repetitive nature, neg‐ ative focus) that have led to consider them as potential forms of a unique higher RNT transdiagnostic factor (Harvey et al, 2004) From this view, the tendency to use dif‐ ferent forms of repetitive negative thoughts (RNT), either rumination or worry or both, would represent a central mechanism causally involved in emotion dysregula‐ tion (Ehring & Watkins, 2008), and, a risk factor for the development of both depression and anxiety. Research on the mechanisms accounting for emerging gender differences in depression and anxiety risk during adolescence has considered how specific forms of RNT (i.e., either rumination or worry) account for specific higher rates of psy‐ chopathology in girls (i.e., depression or anxiety levels, respectively) As for rumination, extensive studies support the existence of higher levels of rumination in women, both in adolescents (Hilt et al, 2010; Gomez-Baya et al, 2017; Muris et al, 2004) and in adults
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