Parental attachment and depressive symptoms in Chinese adolescents: The mediation effect of emotion regulation

Abstract

Objective: We examined if the links between adolescents' parental attachment and depressive symptoms are mediated by emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression), and identified which mediator has a stronger mediation effect. Method: The Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment, Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, and the "Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale" were distributed to 1955 Chinese adolescents (about 50% boys; 49% in senior high school; aged 10-20 years, M = 14.85 AE 2.86 years) from seven provinces. Descriptive statistics, correlation analyses, regression analyses, and mediation analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses. Results: The results showed that cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression partially mediated the associations between paternal and maternal attachment and depressive symptoms after controlling for grade and sex. Further, the indirect effects of parental attachment through cognitive reappraisal were stronger than those through expressive suppression. Conclusions: These findings suggest that adolescents with secure parental attachment (vs. insecure) have a lower risk of developing depressive symptoms and that increasing use of cognitive reappraisal and decreasing use of expressive suppression may help adolescents reduce their depressive symptoms. K E Y W O R D Sadolescents, cognitive reappraisal, depressive symptoms, expressive suppression, mediation effect, parental attachment

Perceived parental support and college students’ depressive symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic: The mediating roles of emotion regulation strategies and resilience

“…From such communications children can learn to take multiple perspectives and to use cognitive reappraisal strategies when coping with stress. Expressive suppression is a maladaptive strategy that decreases behavioral expression of emotions (Chen et al, 2016 , 2019 ; Goldin et al, 2008 ; Gross, 2001 ). This strategy is used by individuals who lack parental warmth and support to avoid punishment and rejection (Ogbaselase et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Many studies have further linked emotion regulation strategies to depression (Diedrich et al, 2017 ; Sun et al, 2020 ). As an adaptive strategy, cognitive reappraisal can help reduce negative emotions and improve mental health (Chen et al, 2019 ). In contrast, as a negative emotion regulation strategy, expressive suppression leads to emotion-related physiological problems and depression (Gross & John, 2003 ).…”

Parent–child attachment and mental health in young adolescents: a moderated mediation analysis

“…Empirical studies have demonstrated that low-quality parentchild attachment is associated with internalized psychological problems such as loneliness, depression (Yıldız, 2016), and emotional anorexia nervosa (Laporta-Herrero et al, 2021). adolescents with high-quality parent-child attachment tend to exhibit higher selfefficacy (Chen et al, 2019) and better mental health (Liu et al, 2019;Spruit et al, 2020). Hypothesis 1: Parent-child attachment is a significant positive predictor of adolescent mental health.…”

Adolescent Depressive Symptoms: The Role of Late Childhood Frontal EEG Asymmetry, Executive Function, and Adolescent Cognitive Reappraisal

“…The process model has been used extensively in adulthood research; more recently the process model has been applied to childhood and adolescent research (Chen et al, 2019 ; Parsafar & Davis, 2019 ). We incorporated the process model to examine whether executive function and frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry (FA) may be important for CR and depressive symptoms among adolescents.…”