Responses to depression and their effects on the duration of depressive episodes
This is the paper that introduced response styles theory, the account of why depressive episodes last as long as they do. Its claim is that what people do when their mood drops matters more than the drop itself. Some respond by dwelling on the feeling and on its causes and meanings, a style the author named rumination, and this prolongs and deepens the episode. Others respond by engaging with something absorbing, and recover faster. The theory was proposed to explain why depression lasts longer in some people than others, and it became the foundation of a very large literature, including the argument that rumination accounts for part of the difference in depression rates between women and men. Later work by the same author revised several parts of it in public, which is the review this vault cites alongside. This page describes the theory from public material, because no abstract of the 1991 paper is publicly available.
This is the paper that introduced response styles theory, the account of why depressive episodes last as long as they do. Its claim is that what people do when their mood drops matters more than the drop itself. Some respond by dwelling on the feeling and on its causes and meanings, a style the author named rumination, and this prolongs and deepens the episode. Others respond by engaging with something absorbing, and recover faster. The theory was proposed to explain why depression lasts longer in some people than others, and it became the foundation of a very large literature, including the argument that rumination accounts for part of the difference in depression rates between women and men. Later work by the same author revised several parts of it in public, which is the review this vault cites alongside. This page describes the theory from public material, because no abstract of the 1991 paper is publicly available.
Written from the public account of the theory this paper introduced.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
The founding statement of response styles theory.
Where we use it
- Why You Lie Awake at 3am Replaying One Conversation, Why We Care
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.100.4.569
DOI: 10.1037/0021-843X.100.4.569