Me, Myself, and My Thoughts: The Influence of Brooding and Reflective Rumination on Depressive Symptoms in Athletes in the United Kingdom

Abstract

<jats:p>Individual differences in vulnerability to depression are still underexplored in athletes. We tested the influence of different brooding and reflective rumination profiles (i.e., repetitive thought processes in response to low/depressed mood) on the odds of experiencing clinically relevant depressive symptoms in competitive athletes (<jats:italic>N</jats:italic> = 286). The Patient Health Questionnaire–9 and the Ruminative Responses Scale–short form were utilized to measure depression and rumination, respectively. Compared to athletes with a low brooding/reflection profile, athletes with a high brooding/reflection profile had significantly higher odds of experiencing clinical levels of depressive symptoms (OR = 13.40, 95% CI = 3.81–47.11). A high reflection/low brooding profile was not, however, related to increased odds of depressive symptoms. Future research could extend our findings by exploring determinants of ruminative tendencies, especially brooding, in athletes. Furthermore, psychological interventions targeting rumination could be examined as a potential prevention and treatment approach to tackling depressive symptoms in athletes.</jats:p>

Depressive symptoms in Icelandic elite athletes: A prospective examination through the lens of the response styles theory

“…While both reflective and brooding rumination were correlated with depressive symptoms at T1, only brooding predicted depressive symptoms across the study period. This finding supports initial findings reported by Tahtinen et al (2020), who showed that brooding rumination was more strongly linked to concurrent depressive symptoms than reflective rumination. The findings from the current study also echo results reported among non-athletes, underlining that although both types of rumination correlate with concurrent depression, only brooding predicts depressive symptoms over time (Treynor et al, 2003).…”

“…To-date only one study has explicitly tested depressive rumination in relation to depressive symptoms in athletes. In a study by Tahtinen et al (2020), findings suggested that athletes with high levels of brooding rumination were significantly more likely to exhibit clinically significant depressive symptoms than athletes with low levels of brooding. Reflective rumination, however, increased the likelihood of experiencing clinically significant depressive symptoms only in athletes with high, but not low, levels of brooding.…”

What Lies Beneath: Exploring Different Depressive Symptoms Across Selected Risk Factors in Icelandic Team Sport Athletes

“…One of the aims of this study was, therefore, to explore sum scores from the perspective of DSM criteria. Several studies in athletes have utilized PHQ-9 scores ≥10 as a cutoff for identifying clinically relevant cases and reporting prevalence rates (Bell et al, 2016;Du Preez et al, 2017;McGuire, Ingram, Sachs, & Tierney, 2017;Silva-Rocha, de Sousa, & Osório, 2019;Tahtinen et al, 2020;Tahtinen & Kristjansdottir, 2019). We, however, speculated that when applying this cutoff, athletes could attain clinically significant scores without exhibiting the core symptoms of depression (i.e., lack of interest and depressed mood).…”

“…However, as discussed by several authors (e.g. Nixdorf et al, 2013;Tahtinen et al, 2020;Wolanin et al, 2016), samples have often consisted of a relatively small number of athletes across different sports, and therefore, comparisons have tended to focus on differences between broader sport categories, such as team and individual sports (e.g., Beable et al, 2017;Nixdorf et al, 2013). Consequently, to better understand potential sport-specific differences, scholars have underlined that future studies should aim to include larger samples across specific sports (Golding et al, 2020;Junge & Feddermann-Demont, 2016;Junge & Prinz, 2019;Nixdorf et al, 2013;Wolanin et al, 2016).…”

An Exploratory Pilot Study on Choking Episodes in Archery

“…Among these are: reducing anxiety (but this mode of thinking does nothing but maintain anxiety); resolving situations (in reality it is not so because the person remains firm and rigid, does not elaborate concrete and effective alternatives); "emotional shield, " that is, the person thinks that the brooding keeps him in a state of alarm and therefore keeps him ready to face the feared situation; ascopic brooding, the subjects are not able to explain the reasons why they brood, so the brooding seems to have no precise purpose and for this reason it is seen as something uncontrollable from which it is difficult to escape. Brooding is a construct of rumination and it can be associated to anxiety, depressive symptoms and psychological distress (Michael et al, 2007;Egan et al, 2013;Tahtinen et al, 2019).…”