Worry is a repetitive cognitive process in which a person anticipates and elaborates on possible undesirable future events and their consequences. On the other hand, mindfulness is nonelaborative, nonjudgmental, present-centered awareness in which experiences that arise in the attentional field are acknowledged and accepted. In previous research, worry and mindfulness have been proposed, respectively, as risk and protective factors for psychopathology, including depression and anxiety. However, so far, the roles of worry and mindfulness were studied separately.

To estimate both specific and common contribution of worry and mindfulness to severity of anxiety and depressive symptoms in a sample of adults from the general population.

One-hundred fifty-six adults recruited from the community took part in the study. They completed self-report questionnaires measuring anxiety symptoms (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory), depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory), worry (Penn State Worry Questionnaire) and mindfulness (Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale Revised). A series of hierarchical stepwise regression analyses were performed on the collected data.

Mindfulness and worry were found to be related to severity of both depressive and anxiety symptoms, with worry being a risk factor and mindfulness being a protective factor. However, the relative contribution of worry and mindfulness was different for the two types of symptoms: worry was a stronger predictor of variance in anxiety symptoms than mindfulness, mindfulness was on the other hand a better predictor of variance in depressive symptoms.

Worry and mindfulness introduce both unique and common contribution to severity of anxiety and depressive symptoms.