Sammanfattning
Why do more mindful individuals tend to be less depressed? We hypothesized (1) that mindfulness
is associated with depressive symptoms both via the path of lower levels of rumination and
higher levels of self-compassion and (2) that the path via self-compassion would explain variance
beyond that which could be explained by rumination. Undergraduate students (N = 277) completed
the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, the Rumination subscale of the RuminationReflection
Questionnaire, the Self-Compassion Scale, and the depression subscale of the
symptom checklist-90 revised (SCL-90-R-dep). Results showed that mindfulness was associated
with depressive symptoms both via the pathway of lower levels of rumination and via the
pathway of higher levels of self-compassion. Both pathways were found to predict unique variance
in depressive symptoms beyond that which could be explained by the other pathway. This
suggests that one needs to consider the influence of mindfulness on both rumination and on
self-compassion in order to fully understand why mindful individuals tend to be less depressed.