Abstract
Objective: Pain affects a significant proportion of college students in the United States and has been linked to anxiety and depressive symptoms. Rumination and worry, two transdiagnostic factors linked to comorbidity, may explain the relationship between pain and mental health symptoms.
Current Study: The current study examined worry and rumination as explanatory factors in the relationship between pain and anxiety and depressive symptoms in a sample of college students with pain (n = 1,577; 79.9% female).
Results: Results indicated that both rumination and worry explained the relationship between pain and depressive and social anxiety symptoms, while rumination alone explained the relationship between pain and anxious arousal symptoms.
Conclusion: The current study provides novel empirical evidence that worry and rumination each help explain the relationship between pain and anxiety and depressive symptoms among college students with current pain, and college students in pain may benefit from targeted psychosocial strategies aimed at decreasing worry and ruminative responses.
Conflict of interest disclosure
The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of the University of Houston.