Unforgiveness, rumination, and depressive symptoms among older adults

Abstract

The experience of feeling unforgiven for past transgressions may contribute to depressive symptoms in later life. This article tests a model in which feeling unforgiven by God and by other people have direct effects on depressive symptoms while self-unforgiveness and rumination mediate this relationship. The sample consisted of 965 men and women aged 67 and older who participated in a national probability sample survey, the Religion, Aging, and Health survey. Results from a latent variable model indicate that unforgiveness by others has a significant direct effect on depressive symptoms and an indirect effect via self-unforgiveness and rumination. However, rather than having a direct effect on depressive symptoms, unforgiveness by God operates only indirectly through self-unforgiveness and rumination. Similarly, self-unforgiveness has an indirect effect on depressive symptoms through rumination.

Keywords:

• depression
• forgiveness
• mental health
• regrets
• transgressions

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging (T32-AG000117–Dunkle, P.I.; RO1 AG014749; and RO1 AG026259–Krause, P.I.) and a grant from the John Templeton Foundation through the Duke University Center on Spirituality, Theology, and Health (Krause, P.I). The authors would like to express their appreciation to Laura Klem for her assistance with the data analysis and to Ruth Dunkle, Jeungkun Kim, Minyoung Kwak, and Jiann Zhang for their comments on earlier versions of this article.