Teen depression tied to balance of adaptive and maladaptive emotional strategies, study finds

A recent study published in Behaviour Research and Therapy provides new insights into how young people manage their emotions and the potential impact on depression. The study found that nearly all adolescents use some maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, but this is not necessarily harmful if balanced with more adaptive strategies. Over time, the use of these maladaptive strategies generally decreases as adolescents grow older. However, an increase in the predominant use of maladaptive strategies is linked to heightened depression symptoms.

Adolescence is a period marked by increased emotional intensity and evolving social and academic challenges, which demand enhanced emotion regulation skills. Understanding how adolescents regulate their emotions and how these processes relate to depression is essential for developing strategies to support their mental health.

Previous research has primarily focused on categorizing emotion regulation strategies as either adaptive or maladaptive. However, recent studies suggest that the effectiveness of these strategies can vary depending on the context and individual circumstances. By using a longitudinal design and daily diary methods, the authors of the new study sought to capture the dynamic and developmental nature of emotion regulation in adolescents.

“Adolescence has a reputation as an overly emotional period, but in fact it is also a time of incredible development in the ability to regulate emotions and to think in more complex ways,” said study author Reuma Gadassi-Polack of the Academic College of Tel-Aviv Yaffo and Yale University.

“As a clinician and a researcher (and a person), I felt that examining different emotion regulation strategies separately is incredibly inaccurate, as we all use all types of strategies to deal with our emotions. Moreover, I believed that everyone uses ‘bad’ strategies sometimes (which my study shows), and I wanted to know if it is necessarily so bad — this study shows it really isn’t, as long as you also use other strategies and not mainly the ‘bad’ ones.”

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The study included 148 youths aged 9 to 15 from the New Haven, Connecticut area. They were recruited through flyers, Craigslist, and Facebook advertisements. The study comprised two waves of data collection: the first wave took place from January to September 2019, and the second wave occurred from March to August 2020, coinciding with the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During both waves, participants completed daily diary surveys for 21 days in Wave 1 and 28 days in Wave 2. These surveys included questions about their use of various emotion regulation strategies and their levels of depressive symptoms.

Participants were asked to report the extent to which they had engaged in specific emotion regulation strategies each day. These strategies included problem-solving, distraction, rumination, dampening, and positive rumination (both emotion-focused and self-focused).

Problem-solving is an adaptive strategy where individuals address and resolve the issues causing their distress, while distraction involves shifting focus to more pleasant activities to temporarily relieve negative emotions. In contrast, rumination is a maladaptive strategy where one repeatedly dwells on negative thoughts, exacerbating feelings of distress.

Dampening involves downplaying positive emotions, preventing full enjoyment of positive experiences. Positive rumination, which can be emotion-focused or self-focused, involves savoring positive feelings and reflecting on one’s achievements, enhancing overall happiness and self-esteem.

The researchers calculated the ratio of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (rumination and dampening) to the total number of strategies used each day. This ratio was used as an index of emotion regulation flexibility.

The researchers found that nearly all participants used some maladaptive emotion regulation strategies almost every day. However, the frequency of these maladaptive strategies generally decreased over the year between the two waves of data collection. In other words, the ratio of maladaptive strategies to all emotion regulation strategies was lower in Wave 2 compared to Wave 1, indicating that as youths aged, they became better at balancing their emotion regulation strategies.

Interestingly, adolescents tended to regulate their positive emotions more frequently than their negative emotions.

“What surprised me is that kids regulate (both up-regulation and down-regulation) their positive emotions more than their negative emotions,” Gadassi-Polack told PsyPost. “That is very different from adults who mainly respond to negative emotions. This finding makes a lot of sense in retrospect, as we know that positive emotions (especially high-intensity ones) become less prominent with the transition to young adulthood. It’s important to know that this decline in positive emotions is normative and not a sign of psychopathology.”

Adolescents with higher levels of depressive symptoms used a greater proportion of maladaptive strategies. Those with clinical levels of depressive symptoms (scores of 3 or higher on the Children’s Depression Inventory) used about 10-12% more maladaptive strategies compared to those with lower levels of depressive symptoms. This finding was consistent across both waves of data collection and was not influenced by gender or age.

On a daily level, the study showed that increases in the use of maladaptive strategies were associated with increases in depressive symptoms. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that changes in the balance between maladaptive and adaptive emotion regulation strategies over the year predicted changes in depressive symptoms.

“Most kids show natural improvement in the way the deal with their feelings as they grow up (even under a major stressor such as the COVID pandemic) — but that those who don’t improve are at risk for psychopathology,” Gadassi-Polack explained. “Another important point is the realization that we all sometimes cope in a suboptimal way with our emotions, but we shouldn’t be too hard with ourselves because of it, as long as we balance it with other coping styles.”

But the study, like all research, includes some caveats.

“This study was done on a largely White, educated sample — its conclusions may not apply to minority groups,” Gadassi-Polack noted. “Another caveat is that the longitudinal assessment was conducted during the initial stage of the pandemic, and therefore may not represent the typical course of development.”

Looking forward, Gadassi-Polack said she wants “to examine whether children and adolescents who are at risk for developing psychopathology (e.g., because they have a parent with psychopathology) have a different trajectory of emotion regulation development. This information can help us design prevention programs and stop the intergenerational transmission of psychopathology.”

The study, “It’s a balancing act: The ratio of maladaptive (vs. All) emotion regulation strategies is associated with depression,” was authored by Reuma Gadassi-Polack, Gabriela Paganini, August Keqin Zhang, Christine Dworschak, Jennifer S. Silk, Hedy Kober, and Jutta Joormann.