The Consequences of Habitual Rumination, Expressive Suppression, and Perceived Stress on Mental and Physical Health Among Older Adults.

The current study aimed to investigate whether habitual rumination, suppression, and perceived stress predict poor mental and physical health as well as well-being in a group of older adults (aged 50 to 80 years) from a non-clinical community sample. The current study comprised a cross-sectional survey design with online self-report measures. It was predicted that higher levels of rumination, suppression, and perceived stress would predict lower levels of general health as well as well-being, and heightened levels of depression and anxiety. Findings from the study indicated that both rumination and perceived stress significantly predicted heightened anxiety, heightened depression, and decreased physical health as well as well-being. These results replicate and extend past research on rumination. However, diverging from past research, suppression was not a significant predictor, or correlate, of stress, anxiety, or of general health and well-being; though, suppression did weakly but significantly predict depression.