(The) effects of emotion regulation on adolescent depression

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Past studies examining emotion regulation(ER) have found that difficulties in ER and use of particular ER strategies are associated with depression in adolescents. However, most of these studies were based on a variable-oriented approach which considers inter-individual differences as random. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between various factors of ER and depression in adolescents based on a person-oriented approach that focuses on individuals. Through two studies, we sought to explore the relationship between ER and depression both cross-sectionally and longitudinally.
Study 1 was conducted with 365 high school students (166 males and 199 females) from a metropolitan area in Korea. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to identify underlying clusters of adolescent ER. A five-class model showed the best fit, namely “adaptive ER group (43.8%)”, “excessive strategies group (7.7%)”, “mild dysregulation group (38.9%)”, “high impulsivity group (3.6%)”, and “limited acceptance/strategy group (6.0%)”. The five groups demonstrated differences in the level of depression, and the “limited acceptance/strategy group” showed significantly higher score on depression than other groups.
In Study 2, 271 high school students (105 males and 166 females) were assessed three times at 6-month interval. Latent growth curve model (LGCM) and latent growth mixture mode l (LGMM) with a cohort-sequential design were examined. It was found that the initial scores and the change rates of depression had various patterns depending on individuals, and that the change patterns of adolescent depression were categorized into four heterogeneous latent groups, namely “moderate-decreasing (80.4%)”, “moderate-increasing (15.9%)”, “low-increasing (1.8%)”, and “high-decreasing (1.8%)”. Also, emotional awareness, emotional clarity, and expressive suppression strategy significantly predicted the high-risk trajectory for adolescent depression.
Above findings together add evidence to the importance of the relation between ER and depression. Specifically, individuals who had difficulties throughout the overall process of emotional processing including emotional awareness, emotional acceptance, and accessing to effective ER strategies, and who used suppression as a primary ER strategy, demonstrated the highest level of depression. Also, difficulties in emotional awareness and clarity and frequent use of suppression were primary risk factors for continuous increase in depression over one year. Therefore, the intervention focused on ER, targeting to enhance one’s emotional awareness and emotional clarity and to reduce the use of suppression, is required for adolescents with depression. Finally, limitations of this study and suggestions for future research were discussed.