(PS4-A2) Fluctuations in Emotion Regulation as a Mechanism Linking Stress and Internalizing Psychopathology Among Adolescents

Stressful life events (SLEs) are tightly coupled with the emergence of anxiety and depression symptoms among adolescents, but the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain poorly understood at the individual level. Emotion regulation may play a role in this pathway, as rumination is often preceded by stressful life events and is strongly associated with later increases in internalizing psychopathology. However, the associations between emotion regulation and psychopathology are much weaker for other strategies such as acceptance and reappraisal. Recent work suggests substantially greater variability in associations between numerous psychological constructs at the within-person level than what has been commonly observed in between-person studies. Because emotion regulation is a dynamic process that varies within-individuals over time and in response to changes in the environment, examining links between stress, emotion regulation, and symptoms of psychopathology in longitudinal within-person studies is warranted. In pre-registered analyses (https://osf.io/wmp35/), we investigated within-person fluctuations in emotion regulation as a mechanism linking SLEs and internalizing psychopathology in an intensive longitudinal study. We examined how monthly fluctuations in SLEs were related to engagement in three emotion regulation strategies (i.e., acceptance, reappraisal, rumination) and whether these strategies were associated with changes in internalizing symptoms (i.e., anxiety, depression) in adolescents followed for one year (N=30; n=355 monthly observations). Bayesian hierarchical models revealed that on months when adolescents experienced more SLEs than was typical for them, they also engaged in more rumination (b=0.05, [0.01, 0.10]). Rumination, in turn, was associated with higher anxiety (b=0.49, [0.27, 0.70]) and depression (b=0.40, [0.17, 0.63]) symptoms and mediated the prospective relationship between SLEs and internalizing symptoms. In contrast, greater use of acceptance and reappraisal moderated the association between stressors and anxiety and depression symptoms, respectively, resulting in stronger links between SLEs and symptoms. These results suggest that emotion regulation strategies play different roles in the stress-psychopathology relationship. Understanding how changes in emotion regulation contribute to increases in psychopathology following experiences of stress may provide novel targets for interventions aimed at reducing stress-related psychopathology.