Depression and Repetitive Negative Thinking among Older Adults: The Specific Role of Executive Dysfunction

Depression in older adults poses serious consequences, thus understanding vulnerability factors may contribute to the development and implementation of appropriate clinical interventions. Executive function deficits have been proposed as risk factors for geriatric depression. One possible factor that may facilitate the impact of executive function deficits is Repetitive Negative Thinking (RNT) patterns that had been defined as an inclination to entertain uncontrollable, abstract, repetitive, and mainly negative thoughts about events that took place in the past or will take place in the future. The present study aimed to test the moderator roles of different dimensions of executive function on the relationship between repetitive negative thinking and geriatric depression. A sample of 128 community-dwelling older adults (63 women, 65 men), between 60 and 82 years of age, were administered both self-report questionnaires measuring depression (Geriatric Depression Scale), and repetitive negative thinking (Penn State Worry Questionnaire) and neuropsychological tests measuring inhibition (Stroop Color- Word Test) and working memory (Digit Span Backward). All participants lived independently in Istanbul, and spoke Turkish as their native language. The results showed that working memory capacity significantly moderated the relationship between repetitive negative thinking and depression as predicted. However, the results did not indicate the same moderator effect of inhibition. The present data suggests that high working memory capacity is able to moderate the relationship between repetitive negative thinking and depression among older adults. This finding has important implications for clinical interventions targeting depression in older adults whose clinical presentations are complicated with repetitive negative thinking and executive dysfunction.