Relationship Beween Rumination, Depression, and Aggression in Children

The purpose of this study was to examine the shared and unique associations of sadness rumination and anger rumination and their links to depressive and aggressive symptoms in pre/early adolescents. Children, seven through fourteen years old, completed self-report measures of their response styles, depressive symptoms, and peer nominations of aggressive behaviors. Results revealed that anger rumination uniquely predicted aggressive and depressive symptoms, controlling for sadness rumination. In contrast to previous studies, sadness rumination did not predict depressive symptoms when anger rumination was controlled for. In addition, sadness rumination was negatively associated with aggressive symptoms. Gender did not moderate the relationship between any of the variables. An exploratory cluster analysis was also conducted to examine patterns of rumination and their associated behavioral correlates. The following groups emerged: general ruminators, high sadness ruminators, high anger ruminators, and low ruminators. Results revealed that general ruminators did not demonstrate comorbid depressive and aggressive behaviors. Study limitations and future directions for research are discussed.