The moderating effect of emotional regulation strategies in the relationship between emotional experiences and physical health of college students / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore the role of college students' emotion regulation strategies in the relationship between emotion experiences and physical health.Method A total of 2 000 college students from a college in Hebei Province were tested randomly with the depression anxiety stress scale-21 (DASS-21),the emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ) and the EuroQoL five-dimension questionnaire(EQ-5D).Results (1) Depression,anxiety and stress and expression suppression of male students (1(0,5),1(0,6),2(0,7),16.61±5.34,respectively) were higher than those of females(0(0,2),1(0,3),1(0,4),15.68±5.l0,respectively) (Z=-6.162,-3.108,-2.846,t=3.814,P＜0.01);and cognitive reappraisal,visual analogue scales (EQ-VAS) and EQ-5D value indexes(EQ-5D) of male students(27.74±7.56,81.17 ± 18.29,0.94 ± 0.15,respectively)were lower than those of females (28.69 ± 6.34,84.23 ± 16.43,0.96 ± 0.11,respectively) (t=-2.967,-3.812,-3.837,P＜0.01).(2) The scores of depression,anxiety and stress were positively correlated with expression suppression (r=0.096,0.080,0.066,P＜0.01),and negatively correlated with cognitive reappraisal(r=-0.176,-0.160,-0.174,P＜0.01) and EQ-VAS (r=-0.410,-0.437,-0.422,P＜0.01).(3) Cognitive reappraisal played a moderating role in the effect of stress on physical health (R2 =0.191,P＜0.01);and expression inhibition exerted a positive moderating role in that of depression on physical health (R2 =0.163,P＜0.01).Conclusion College students' emotion regulation strategies play a moderating role in the effect of emotional state on physical health.