Symposia
Trauma and Stressor Related Disorders and Disasters
Blair E. Wisco, Ph.D.
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina
Cameron P. Pugach, M.A.
Doctoral Candidate
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina
Faith Nomamiukor, MA
Graduate Student
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina
Casey May, MA
Graduate Student
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina
Allison Campbell, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina
Rumination, or thinking passively and repetitively about one’s distress, has emerged as an important risk factor for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Rumination is a type of repetitive negative thinking (RNT), as are worry (anxious anticipation) and trauma-focused rumination (rumination about trauma). Prior structural equation models (SEM) suggest that depressive rumination and worry load onto a common RNT factor but have not included trauma-focused rumination or examined associations with PTSD. A meta-analysis found that, surprisingly, PTSD was more strongly associated with depressive rumination than with trauma-focused rumination, but this may be due to not controlling for depression. The goal of this study was twofold: 1) to examine whether types of RNT are best reflected by separate factors or a single underlying factor and 2) to test whether RNT predicts PTSD after controlling for depression. We analyzed a dataset of 139 trauma-exposed participants (62 diagnosed with PTSD via Clinician Administered PTSD Scale-5 (CAPS-5)). The following were administered: 4-item rumination scale of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (trauma-focused rumination), 5-item brooding scale of Ruminative Response Scale (depressive rumination), 8-item short form of Penn State Worry Questionnaire (worry), and 21-item Beck Depression Inventory-II (depression symptoms). SEM was conducted using the R lavaan package. Bivariate correlations indicated that depressive rumination, r = .50, p< .001, worry, r =.40, p< .001 and trauma-focused rumination, r = .48, p < .001, all significantly correlated with PTSD (CAPS-5 total score). Using SEM, we compared one-, two- (worry vs. other), and three-factor models of RNT and their associations with PTSD and depression. The three-factor model of RNT provided the best fit (RMSEA=.06, CFI=0.95, TLI=.94, SRMR=.06), which was significantly better than the other models (LRT ps< .001). In the SEM, trauma-focused rumination was the only form of RNT significantly associated with PTSD. Our findings indicate that different forms of RNT load onto separate factors and that these factors have different associations with clinical outcomes, suggesting the utility of measuring subtypes of RNT. Our findings also contradict prior literature suggesting that depressive rumination has a stronger association with PTSD than trauma-focused rumination, indicating the importance of examining trauma-focused rumination in this population. Clinical implications and recommendations for future research will be discussed.