The Moderating and Mediating Roles of Mindfulness and Rumination on COVID-19 Stress and Depression: A Longitudinal Study of Young Adults

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only accounted for a substantial number of deaths in the United States but also deleterious mental health outcomes. We integrated multiple lines of previous research to better understand psychological strengths and difficulties in the face of the pandemic by testing a moderated mediation model that posited that rumination mediates the relationship between COVID-related stress and depression, and mindfulness moderates the relationship between COVID-related stress and rumination. The participants were 196 young adults (79.6% female, 53.1% persons of color), who ranged in age between 18 and 33 years (M = 21.21; SD = 3.62). The participants completed measures of COVID-19 stress, rumination, mindfulness, and depressive symptoms at four time points spanning 1 month. Cross-sectional moderated mediation analysis of the data showed that COVID-related stress predicted rumination, which in turn, predicted depressive symptoms. In addition, mindfulness buffered the relationship between COVIDrelated stress and rumination. Later, we ran exploratory analyses to examine the robustness of the main models at each wave, linear mixed-effects models to investigate change over time, and conducted a crosslagged model to test for directional effects. Notably, the longitudinal findings suggested that COVID-related stress and rumination tended to decrease over time and mindfulness remained temporally stable. Additionally, increases in rumination predicted increases in depression. Some longitudinal findings did not consistently congrue with cross-sectional results.