Longitudinal Relations Between Emotion Regulation and Internalizing Symptoms in Emerging Adults During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Background Maladaptive and adaptive emotion regulation are putative risk and protective factors for depression and anxiety, but most prior research does not differentiate within-person effects from between-person individual differences. The current study does so during the early part of the Covid-19 pandemic when internalizing symptoms were high. Methods A sample of emerging adult undergraduate students (N = 154) completed online questionnaires bi-weekly on depression, anxiety, and emotion regulation across eight weeks during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic (April 2nd to June 27th, 2020). Results Depression demonstrated significantly positive between-person correlations with overall maladaptive emotion regulation, catastrophizing, and self-blame, and negative correlations with overall adaptive emotion regulation and reappraisal. Anxiety demonstrated significantly positive between-person correlations with overall maladaptive emotion regulation, rumination, and catastrophizing, and a negative correlation with reappraisal. After controlling for these between-person associations, however, there were generally no within-person associations between emotion regulation and internalizing symptoms. Conclusions Emotion regulation and internalizing symptoms might be temporally stable individual differences that cooccur with one another as opposed to having a more dynamic relation. Alternatively, these dynamic mechanisms might operate over much shorter or longer periods compared to the two-week time lag in the current study. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10608-023-10366-9.

Longitudinal Relations Between Emotion Regulation and Internalizing Symptoms in Emerging Adults During the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Background: Maladaptive and adaptive emotion regulation are putative risk and protective factors for depression and anxiety, but most prior research does not differentiate within-person effects from between-person individual differences. The current study does so during the early part of the Covid-19 pandemic when internalizing symptoms were high. Methods: A sample of emerging adult undergraduate students (N = 154) completed online questionnaires bi-weekly on depression, anxiety, and emotion regulation across eight weeks during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic (April 2nd to June 27th, 2020). Results: Depression demonstrated significantly positive between-person correlations with overall maladaptive emotion regulation, catastrophizing, and self-blame, and negative correlations with overall adaptive emotion regulation and reappraisal. Anxiety demonstrated significantly positive between-person correlations with overall maladaptive emotion regulation, rumination, and catastrophizing, and a negative correlation with reappraisal. After controlling for these between-person associations, however, there were generally no within-person associations between emotion regulation and internalizing symptoms. Conclusions: Emotion regulation and internalizing symptoms might be temporally stable individual differences that cooccur with one another as opposed to having a more dynamic relation. Alternatively, these dynamic mechanisms might operate over much shorter or longer periods compared to the two-week time lag in the current study. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10608-023-10366-9.

Differences in depression, anxiety, and coping in emerging adults prior to versus during the COVID-19 pandemic

Anxiety and depression symptoms were documented at high levels during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for emerging adults. However, most of the research thus far has lacked prepandemic longitudinal or well-matched comparison samples, and cannot determine the extent to which the pandemic increased internalizing symptoms in this population. Additionally, more research is necessary to understand which types of emotion regulation (ER) strategies were used in the pandemic, as these strategies are tightly linked to psychopathology risk and resilience. The current study tested for differences in depression and anxiety symptoms and ER strategy use in emerging adults between a typical prepandemic college semester, and the beginning of the pandemic in the U.S. (April 2020). Results showed higher depression and anxiety symptoms, as well as significant changes in ER strategies, during the pandemic compared to prepandemic levels in well-matched independent samples (N = 324) and a longitudinal sample (n = 54). Planning, positive reappraisal, and self-blame decreased, while catastrophizing and other-blame increased during the pandemic across samples. These findings demonstrate significant increases in internalizing symptoms for emerging adults during the COVID-19 pandemic and provide important insights on how this population coped with the pandemic. The study was limited by examining levels at the beginning of the pandemic and cannot determine if such levels were maintained or fluctuated across the pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) Impact Statement What is the significance of this article for the general public?-The present study demonstrates increases in depression and anxiety symptoms among emerging adults along with changes in emotion regulation strategy use during the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings highlight potential coping profiles to target in counseling and interventions to minimize the negative impacts of salient, life-altering stressors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Coping with COVID Stress: Maladaptive and Adaptive Response Styles Predicting College Student Internalizing Symptom Dimensions.

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted daily life for undergraduates and introduced new stressors (e.g., campus closures). How individuals respond to stressors can interact with stress to increase disorder risk in both unique and transdiagnostic ways. The current study examined how maladaptive and adaptive stress response styles moderated the perceived severity of COVID-related stressors effect on general and specific internalizing dimensions at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in a combined undergraduate sample across two universities (N = 451) using latent bifactor modeling and LASSO modeling to identify optimal predictors. Results showed that perceived stress severity and maladaptive response styles (not adaptive response styles or interactions between stress and response styles) were associated with both common and specific internalizing dimensions. Results suggest additive associations of stress severity and maladaptive coping with internalizing symptoms during the pandemic's beginning, and provide important insights for screening, prevention, and intervention during future public health crises. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10862-022-09975-7.