Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Dec;65(12):1638-1647.
doi: 10.1111/jcpp.14027. Epub 2024 Jun 4.

Changes in emotion regulation strategies during the pandemic: prospective pathways to adolescent depressive symptoms

Sihan Liu  1 , Jianjie Xu  1 , Huiting Cao  1 , Ye An  1 , Yijia Li  1 , Zhuangyang Li  1 , Mengyu Miranda Gao  1 , Zhuo Rachel Han  1
Affiliations

Changes in emotion regulation strategies during the pandemic: prospective pathways to adolescent depressive symptoms

Sihan Liu et al. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2024 Dec.

Abstract

Background: Emotion regulation (ER) is considered central in adolescent psychopathology, and ER strategies may change during challenging times, such as a global pandemic. Despite this, there remains a limited understanding of individual differences in ER mechanisms and their associations with psychopathology. This study examined whether and how cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, and self-compassion changed over COVID-19 and how these changes uniquely predicted adolescents' depressive symptoms.

Methods: A total of 2,411 adolescents (58.6% females; Mage = 18.51, SD = 0.80) completed the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire, the Self-compassion Scale, and the Symptom Checklist-90 before COVID-19 (in 2019) and during COVID-19 (in 2020). The predictive associations between each ER strategy and depressive symptoms were tested with latent change score models.

Results: Adolescents' use of expressive suppression and self-compassion strategies both increased during COVID-19. More increases in expressive suppression predicted more depressive symptoms, whereas more increases in self-compassion predicted fewer depressive symptoms. Although, on average, cognitive reappraisal did not change, it did show significant variations within the sample - increases (vs. decreases) in cognitive appraisal predicted fewer depressive symptoms.

Conclusions: The study indicates how adolescents' ER strategies changed during the unprecedented global pandemic. It underscores protective roles of increased cognitive reappraisal and self-compassion, as well as the adverse consequence of heightened expressive suppression on adolescents' depressive symptoms. Findings offer insights for targeted interventions aimed at addressing specific ER strategies.

Keywords: COVID‐19 pandemic; adolescence; depressive symptoms; emotion regulation strategies.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Alt, P., Reim, J., & Walper, S. (2021). Fall from grace: Increased loneliness and depressiveness among extraverted youth during the German covid‐19 lockdown. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 31, 678–691.
    1. Balzarotti, S., Biassoni, F., Villani, D., Prunas, A., & Velotti, P. (2016). Individual differences in cognitive emotion regulation: Implications for subjective and psychological well‐being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 17, 125–143.
    1. Bokszczanin, A., Palace, M., Brown, W., Gladysh, O., Tripathi, R., & Shree, D. (2023). Depression, perceived risk of covid‐19, loneliness, and perceived social support from friends among university students in Poland, UK, and India. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 16, 651–663.
    1. Boyne, H., & Hamza, C.A. (2022). Depressive symptoms, perceived stress, self‐compassion and nonsuicidal self‐injury among emerging adults: An examination of the between and within‐person associations over time. Emerging Adulthood, 10, 1269–1285.
    1. Butler, E.A., Egloff, B., Wlhelm, F.H., Smith, N.C., Erickson, E.A., & Gross, J.J. (2003). The social consequences of expressive suppression. Emotion, 3, 48–67.

LinkOut - more resources