Metacognitive Beliefs and Rumination: A Longitudinal Study

High prevalence and costs of depression underline the importance of understanding and treating vulnerability factors of depression such as rumination. Given the role of rumination in predicting the onset of new depressive episodes, it is important to learn why previously healthy people start to ruminate. One explanation is provided by the metacognitive model of depression, which assumes that positive beliefs about rumination initiate rumination. However previous research has been predominantly cross-sectional in nature. We investigated the effect of positive beliefs about rumination on engagement in rumination in a longitudinal design and tested the indirect effect of positive beliefs about rumination on depressive symptoms in 60 healthy university students. A hierarchical regression revealed a significant effect of Time 1 (T1) positive beliefs about rumination on Time 2 rumination, even after controlling for T1 rumination. Additionally, an indirect effect of positive beliefs about rumination on depressive symptoms via rumination was confirmed using a multiple regression and a Sobel test.