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This study investigated the relationships between academic stress, mindfulness-related constructs (ie, mindfulness, self-compassion and psychological flexibility) and anxiety and depressive symptoms in a sample of 190 international university students. Participants filled in an online questionnaire. Multiple Regression Analyses showed that anxiety and depressive symptoms were significantly related to higher levels of perceived academic stress, and to lower levels of acting with (mindful) awareness, lower self-compassion and lower psychological flexibility. None of the mindfulness-related constructs was found to moderate the relationship between perceived academic stress and anxiety and depressive symptoms. The results provide possible targets for mental health interventions in international university students. Especially the training of mindfulness-related skills could be a promising path.

The aim of this study was to examine the extent to which cognitive emotion regulation strategies were "common or transdiagnostic correlates" of symptoms of depression and anxiety and/or "specific correlates" distinguishing one problem category from the other. The sample comprised 582 13- to 16-year-old secondary school students. Symptoms of depression and anxiety were measured by the SCL-90, and cognitive emotion regulation strategies were measured by the CERQ, in a cross-sectional design. Multivariate regression analyses were performed. Before controlling for comorbidity, the same cognitive emotion regulation strategies that were related to symptoms of depression were also related to symptoms of anxiety. However, after controlling for comorbid anxiety symptoms, rumination, self-blame (only girls), positive reappraisal, and positive refocusing (the latter two inversely) were uniquely (and significantly) associated with depression symptoms; and after controlling for comorbid depression symptoms, catastrophising and other-blame were uniquely related to anxiety symptoms. The results supported the cognitive content-specificity model, in which anxiety is supposed to be uniquely characterised by thoughts concerning the overestimation of threats and harm, and depression is supposed to be uniquely characterised by negative evaluations of self, and of past and future events.

The objective of the present longitudinal study was to examine the relationship between cognitive coping strategies and depressive symptoms at old age. At the two and a half year follow-up study, a community sample of 99 people aged 67 years and older filled out a self-report questionnaire comprising the Geriatric Depression Scale, the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and a negative life events checklist. Cognitive coping strategies seemed to play an important role in relation to depressive symptoms in late life. Elderly persons with more depressive symptoms reported to use acceptance, rumination and catastrophizing to a significantly higher extent and positive reappraisal to a significantly lower extent than those with lower depression scores. After controlling for negative life events and prior depressive symptoms, acceptance and positive reappraisal retained their significant relationship with current depressive symptoms. It is suggested that intervention programs should pay attention to these aspects by challenging the 'maladaptive' strategies, and by supplying the more 'adaptive' strategies. This could be linked to the well-established cognitive therapies.

This study suggests that negative life events may have long-term consequences for people's well-being. A community sample of 194 elderly people was interviewed by means of the Geriatric Depression Scale and the Negative Life Events Questionnaire. Depressed mood at old age was related to the reporting of negative socio-economic circumstances as well as emotional abuse and neglect during childhood, and to the reporting of negative socio-economic circumstances, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect, relational stress and problem behaviour of significant others during (late) adulthood. Depression scores were especially high when subjects reported the experience of many events during adulthood and late adulthood. On top of this, the interaction effect between the number of negative life events experienced in childhood and adulthood indicated that there was a much stronger association between the number of negative life events experienced in adulthood and depressive symptoms in late life, for those who experienced more negative life events in childhood, than for those who did not. It is suggested that incorporating life histories into the diagnostic interview is advisable.