Emotion Dysregulation and Adolescent Psychopathology: A Prospective Study

By Katie A. McLaughlin, M. Hatzenbuehler, D. Mennin, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2011

799 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background Emotion regulation deficits have been consistently linked to psychopathology in cross-sectional studies. However, the direction of the relationship between emotion regulation and psychopathology is unclear. This study examined the longitudinal and reciprocal relationships between emotion regulation deficits and psychopathology in adolescents. Methods Emotion dysregulation and symptomatology (depression, anxiety, aggressive behavior, and eating pathology) were assessed in a large, diverse sample of adolescents (N = 1,065) at two time points separated by seven months. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the longitudinal and reciprocal relationships between emotion dysregulation and symptoms of psychopathology. Results The three distinct emotion processes examined here (emotional understanding, dysregulated expression of sadness and anger, and ruminative responses to distress) formed a unitary latent emotion dysregulation factor. Emotion dysregulation predicted increases in anxiety symptoms, aggressive behavior, and eating pathology after controlling for baseline symptoms but did not predict depressive symptoms. In contrast, none of the four types of psychopathology predicted increases in emotion dysregulation after controlling for baseline emotion dysregulation. Conclusions Emotion dysregulation appears to be an important transdiagnostic factor that increases risk for a wide range of psychopathology outcomes in adolescence. These results suggest targets for preventive interventions during this developmental period of risk.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/46d20d266285db54c111203d3b8d9bc4dd7f1c68

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In Clinical Psychology

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Emotion regulation strategies and psychosocial well-being in adolescence (2016, positive): “A few studies, furthermore, showed that EmR difficulties in adolescence are linked with disorders such depression, anxiety, and problem behavior (Garnefski et al., 2001; McLaughlin et al., 2011).”
A Limited Repertoire of Emotion Regulation Strategies is Associated with Internalizing Problems in Adolescence (2012, background): “Because depression and anxiety often have different etiologies (McLaughlin et al., 2011), three ANCOVAs were run separately to test differences between ER profile groups and (1) depression, (2) anxiety, and (3) social anxiety.”
Negative Social Comparison on Facebook and Depressive Symptoms: Rumination as a Mechanism (2013, result): “This provides additional support for the proposed direction of the mediation effect in our primary model, and it is consistent with previous research that failed to find a significant association between depressive symptoms and increases in emotion dysregulation over time (McLaughlin et al., 2011).”
The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale Short Form (DERS-SF): Validation and Replication in Adolescent and Adult Samples (2015, background): “When emotion regulation skills are underdeveloped or otherwise compromised, normative affective development may be delayed and risk for psychopathology increases (McLaughlin et al. 2011).”