ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Health Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1620067
Associations of perceived stress with depression in medical students: the mediating role of rumination and the moderating role of emotional intelligence
Provisionally accepted
- Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Medical students have become a group with a high prevalence of depression and are particularly vulnerable to it. Recognizing the factors affecting depression among medical students is crucial. This study was aimed at exploring the effects of perceived stress on medical students' depression under the mediating role of the rumination and the moderating role of the emotional intelligence. Methods: A survey was conducted with 648 medical students in XX Province, XX (blind review). Participants provided responses to measures of perceived stress, rumination, emotional intelligence, and depression. Data analysis was performed in SPSS version 26 and the SPSS PROCESS Macro. Results: The results revealed significant positive associations between perceived stress (r = 0.63, p < 0.01) and rumination (r = 0.59, p < 0.01) with depression. Rumination plays a mediating role between perceived stress and depression, with the mediation effect accounting for 31.67% (SE = 0.10, 95% CI = 0.15, 0.26). Furthermore, emotional intelligence significantly moderated the direct effect (moderated mediation = -0.01, SE = 0.01, 95% CI = -0.01, -0.00). Conclusion: Rumination serves as a mediator in the relationship between perceived stress and depression, while emotional intelligence significantly moderates the impact of perceived stress on depression.
Keywords: perceived stress, rumination, Emotional Intelligence, Depression, Medical students 1.Introduction
Received: 03 May 2025; Accepted: 10 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hong, Luo, Li, Wu and Bao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Youjuan Hong, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.