6 - (IOP 36) Executive Functioning and Relapse to Depression: Prospective Associations and Underlying Mechanisms

Previous research has found that individuals with current and remitted depression exhibit executive functioning impairments. However, there is a lack of scientific investigation into the mechanisms that link executive functioning to depression vulnerability, particularly with rigorous methodology and demographically representative samples. According to cognitive and emotion regulation theories, executive functioning difficulties may interfere with use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies like reappraisal and promote depressive rumination, which in turn contribute to depression. Another possibility is that executive functioning problems lead to impaired work functioning, which could exacerbate life stress and depressed mood. In a demographically diverse sample of individuals diagnosed with remitted depression (N = 80; 65% identified as women, 7% identified as gender minority, 37% identified as sexual minority, 58% identified as BIPOC), we examined whether baseline executive functioning predicted relapse to depression over a 1-year follow-up period and tested three possible moderators of this predictive relationship: positive reappraisal, rumination, and work impairment. There was a relapse rate of 30% over the 1-year follow-up (N = 24). Executive functioning performance as measured by computerized neuropsychological tests did not significantly predict relapse, χ2 (6) = 6.14, p = .408. In contrast, greater self-reported problems with executive functioning predicted an increased likelihood of relapse, controlling for baseline depression symptoms, β = 0.21, SE = 0.08, p = .009, OR = 1.23. However, positive reappraisal, rumination, and work impairment were not significant mediators of this longitudinal relationship (all bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals included 0). These findings underscore the role of executive functioning in depression vulnerability and provide novel evidence that subjective executive functioning problems prospectively predict relapses to depression among demographically diverse individuals with remitted depression over a 1-year period. The results further indicate that executive functioning problems did not contribute to relapses via decreased use of positive reappraisal, increased depressive rumination, or greater impairment in work functioning. Further investigation of potential explanatory mechanisms for the heightened risk of relapse among remitted depressed individuals with greater executive functioning problems is needed.