| Summary: | Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of response styles to negative affect in mediating the relationship between depression and vulnerability to experiencing mania. Methods: A cross-sectional correlational design was utilized to examine 217 participants’ responses to an online survey comprising the Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS), Response Styles Questionnaire (RSQ), and Personal Health Questionaire (PHQ-8). Results: After controlling for covariates (age, gender, ethnicity & depression), rumination, risk-taking and adaptive-coping were all positive predictors of hypomanic personality. Parallel mediation analysis demonstrated that rumination and risk-taking positively mediated the relationship between depression and hypomanic personality, whilst adaptive-coping negatively mediated this relationship. Serial mediation analysis revealed evidence for a sequence of causal mediators, demonstrating that rumination independently predicted risk-taking, which subsequently predicted hypomanic personality. Adaptive-coping continued to supress the relationship between depression and hypomanic personality after including risk-taking in the mediation analysis. Limitations: An unstratified volunteer sampling technique was utilised, introducing potential bias regarding the tendency to adopt maladaptive response styles. Utilising a three-factor response styles solution may lack face validity due to the wide variety of behaviours that encompass adaptive-coping strategies such as pleasant distraction and problem solving. Conclusions: Our findings support the maladaptive role of rumination and risk-taking in mediating the relationship between depression and vulnerability to experience mania, and further substantiates the protective function of adaptive-coping. Clinical interventions may endeavour to diminish the use of rumination and risk-taking, whilst promoting adaptive-coping strategies such as pleasant distraction and problem-solving.
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