{
  "abstract": "Depression is one of the most prevalent and disabling mental health conditions worldwide, with an estimated 5.7% of adults currently experiencing depression, around 332 million people globally. Rumination, a repetitive pattern of thinking that involves comparing one’s circumstances with how one would ideally like them to be without engaging in problem-solving, is the cognitive vulnerability most strongly associated with depression. Despite the evidence, there are no studies that have employed causal discovery and inference to investigate whether rumination has a causal effect on depressive mood using N-of-1 psychological time series data. To address this gap, this study conducted a secondary analysis of publicly available data on an American Latino Female diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) who reported on her feelings 4 times per day over 39 days. To conduct causal discovery, the Vector Autoregressive Linear Non-Gaussian Acyclic Model (VAR-LiNGAM) algorithm was used. To conduct causal inference, the g-formula, implemented via a Monte Carlo simulation, was used to estimate the Contemporaneous Effect, the 1-lag Structural Direct Effect and the 1-lag Total Effect of rumination on depressed mood. The findings indicated that high rumination was associated with a 15.6-point increase in depressed mood contemporaneously and a 1.7-point increase in depressed mood approximately 4 hours later. This evidence further substantiates the importance of interventions designed to reduce ruminative thinking and, consequently, improve depressive symptoms.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 5,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Pedro Henrique Ribeiro Santiago"
    },
    {
      "name": "Alyssa Sawyer"
    },
    {
      "name": "Mark Kohler"
    },
    {
      "name": "Lisa Jamieson"
    },
    {
      "name": "Carly Sutherland"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f92c0pcxfbbg5.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.31234/osf.io/cepxv_v1",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "f92c0pcxfbbg5",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/cepxv_v1/",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "bepress",
      "Assessment"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Clinical Psychology"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Depressive Disorders"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Mental Disorders"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Social and Behavioral Sciences"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "3205|Mental Health Research Topics"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7221774082",
  "pdf_url": "https://osf.io/cepxv/download",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-14",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f92c0pcxfbbg5.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:20:37Z",
      "native_id": "cepxv",
      "source": "osf",
      "url": "https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/cepxv_v1/"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "medicine",
      "origin": "bepress:Clinical Psychology",
      "subfield": "psychiatry"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Rumination under the microscope: causal discovery and inference of the effect of rumination on depressive symptoms in an N-of-1 time series",
  "title_text": "Rumination under the microscope: causal discovery and inference of the effect of rumination on depressive symptoms in an N-of-1 time series",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:20:37Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f92c0pcxfbbg5",
  "venue": "PsyArXiv",
  "versions": []
}