A biopsychosocial approach to rumination in young adolescent girls

Rumination, the tendency to repeatedly dwell on negative thoughts and feelings in a passive manner, has been related to depression as well as impulsive behaviors in prior studies. In the present set of studies involving young adolescents, rumination was related to depressive symptoms and self-injurious behavior. These studies focus on psychological, social and biological bases for rumination. In the first study involving a large, ethnically and racially diverse group of young adolescent boys and girls, girls reported higher levels of rumination compared to boys, and this statistically accounted for the higher rate of depressive symptoms among girls. Additionally, two factors emerged as mediators of the gender difference in rumination: poor emotional understanding and high levels of peer communication. In the second study of young adolescent girls, rumination was related to engaging in self-injury for emotion-regulation purposes. Specifically, rumination interacted with depressive symptoms to predict self-injury for automatic positive reinforcement (e.g., to feel something, even if it is pain). Additionally, peer communication interacted with peer teasing and victimization to predict self-injuring for interpersonal reinforcement. In the third study involving young adolescent girls and their mothers, a polymorphism on the brain-derived neurotrophic factor gene Val66Met was related to rumination and depression. Furthermore, rumination mediated the relationship between Val66Met and depression, and there appeared to be specific developmental effects of this genotype on risk for depression. Clinical implications involve treatments that teach effective emotion-regulation skills by early adolescence in order to prevent depression and other forms of psychopathology that often affect girls.