Coonan, Gary A. (2010) The Influence of Mindfulness and Rumination on Depression. Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
In recent years, a major goal of clinical research has been to develop greater insight into maladaptive cognitive processing and psychopathology. Within this body of work, studies of mindfulness and rumination have been implicated in the onset and maintenance of depression. Such studies have tended to collect data mostly from student samples and to a lesser extent, clinical samples. However, using crosssectional design, this study examined these constructs in a community sample of Australian adults (N = 227). Further, new measures of both mindfulness and rumination have refined the definition and measurement of these constructs. The present study examined the role of mindfulness measured using the 12 item Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale – Revised (CAMS-R) and rumination measured using the Ruminative Thought Style Questionnaire (RTS), in predicting scores of depressive distress using the Depression sub-scale of the short form Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21). It was hypothesised that elevated levels of mindfulness measured using the recently developed CAMS-R would be negatively associated with the severity of depressive distress. It was also hypothesised that elevated levels of rumination measured using the recently developed RTS would be positively associated with the reported severity of depressive distress. These associations were explored using hierarchical regression analyses controlling for age and gender, and it was revealed that age was a more potent predictor of depression than gender. A one-way ANOVA, employing Tukey HSD post-hoc comparisons, disclosed a trend in the relationship between age and depression, with reported levels of depressive distress generally decreasing as participant age grouping increased, F(3, 223) = 3.13, p = .027, r = .12. A Student’s t-test comparison of the difference between means revealed that although females reported higher levels of depressive distress than males, the difference was nonsignificant t(225) = 1.93, p = .055, 95% CI [0.02, 2.34], d = 0.26. The results of the hierarchical regression analysis revealed that elevated levels of both mindfulness and rumination were associated with the level of depression, R = .60, F(4,222) = 31.88, p = .0001. In addition, meditational analysis using bootstrap re-sampling indicated that mindfulness was a partial mediator of the effect of rumination on depression, demonstrating a total indirect effect reduction in path c of .02, z = 3.43, p = .0006, 95% CI [.01, .03]. The results of the current study confirm and clarify previous research conducted with less well developed scales. Practical implications for clinicians involve designing intervention strategies so as to more clearly address cognitive processing that is aligned with the refined constructs addressed in the present study. Future longitudinal research may assist in establishing the nature of salient causal relationship between mindfulness, rumination and their influence on depression.
|
Statistics for this ePrint Item |
| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
|---|---|
| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Sciences - Department of Psychology (Up to 30 Jun 2013) |
| Supervisors: | Thompson, Murray |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Science (Honours) (Psychology) |
| Date Deposited: | 06 Jan 2026 03:25 |
| Last Modified: | 06 Jan 2026 03:25 |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52228 |
Actions (login required)
 |
Archive Repository Staff Only |
