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Background: Difficulty regulating emotions is a symptom of many psychological disorders yet little research has examined the longitudinal relations of particular facets of emotion regulation (ER) that may differentiate between internalizing symptoms. Method: At-risk youth (n = 102; 44.1% boys, 77.5% Black; M age = 9.65) and caregivers (n = 74; 87.1% mothers) participated in a 2-year longitudinal study. Children reported on their ER, and children and caregivers on symptomatology. Results: Different patterns, varying by emotion facet (dysregulation, inhibition, coping) and type (anger, sadness, worry), predicted anxiety and depression symptoms. Conclusions: Anxiety and depression are entities with distinct patterns of emotion-related antecedents. Key Practitioner Points• The findings from this study can inform prevention and intervention programs because they provide evidence for the need to consider children's discrete emotional experiences and the contexts in which they may struggle to regulate their anger, sadness, and worry.• Prevention programs may consider specifically targeting children's suppression as well as under-controlled methods of coping with negative emotion in their emotion skill-building units.• These findings can provide support for the few treatment programs for childhood anxiety and depression that have incorporated an affective module or component to their cognitive behavioral treatment for children and adolescents.• Proactively facilitating the development of high-risk children's ER skills at key junctures in early childhood may result in more successful psychological adjustment.

Adolescence is a critical developmental period marked by an increase in risk behaviors, including nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI). Heightened reward-related brain activation and relatively limited recruitment of prefrontal regions contribute to the initiation of risky behaviors in adolescence. However, neural reward processing has not been examined among adolescents who are at risk for future engagement for NSSI specifically, but who have yet to actually engage in this behavior. In the current fMRI study (N = 71), we hypothesized that altered reward processing would be associated with adolescents' thoughts of NSSI. Results showed that NSSI youth exhibited heightened activation in the bilateral putamen in response to a monetary reward. This pattern of findings suggests that heightened neural sensitivity to reward is associated with thoughts of NSSI in early adolescence. Implications for prevention are discussed.

How are emotional processes associated with the increased rates of substance use and psychological disorders commonly observed during adolescence? An index of emotion-related physiological arousal—cortisol reactivity—and subjective emotion regulation have both been independently linked to substance use and psychological difficulties among youth. The current study (N = 134 adolescents) sought to elucidate the interactive effects of cortisol reactivity following a stressful parent–child interaction task and self-reported emotion regulation ability on adolescents’ substance use and externalizing and internalizing behavior problems. Results revealed that adolescents with low levels of cortisol reactivity and high emotion regulation difficulties were more likely to use substances, and also had the highest parent-reported symptoms of oppositional defiant disorder. With respect to internalizing symptoms, high emotion-related physiological reactivity coupled with high emotion regulation difficulties were associated with higher self-reported major depression symptoms among youth. Findings reveal that different profiles of HPA axis arousal and emotion regulation are associated with substance use and symptoms of psychopathology among adolescents.