ABSTRACT
Objective:To investigate the relationship between emotion variability and assessment of psychiat-ric symptoms in middle school students,and validate that by structure equation modeling.Method:A total of 129 junior middle school students aged 13 -15 years were selected and assessed with the SCL-90 scale for psychiatric symptoms,the Adolescent Daily Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ADERQ)for emotion regulation strategies, daily reconstruction method (DRM)for emotion variability during two weeks.Results:The students had higher positive emotion score than negative emotion score [(2.7 ±0.7)vs.(1.4 ±0.3),P <0.001],and higher negative emotion variability than positive emotion variability [(0.4 ±0.1 )vs.(0.3 ±0.1 ),P =0.012].Positive emotion variability and negative emotion variability were positively correlated with total scores of SCL-90 (r =0.34,0.24;Ps <0.001).Structural equation modeling revealed positive emotion variability,negative emotion variability and e-motion regulation strategy of cognitive appraisal had a direct effect on psychiatric symptoms (the path coefficient were 0.21,0.28,-0.24;Ps <0.001),cognitive immersed strategy had a direct effect on psychiatric symptoms and negative emotion variability(the path coefficient was 0.14,0.13,P =0.037,P =0.041).Conclusions:It suggests that both negative emotion variability and positive emotion variability play an important role in psychiatric symp-toms.