How depression facilitates psychological difficulties in children? The mediating role of cognitive emotion regulation strategies.

Knowing the processes of emotion regulation that children use to respond to stressful situations is essential to analyze the development of psychopathology. The objectives of this research were to study the use of nine cognitive emotion regulation strategies (CERS) in depressed children, compared to non-depressed children, and to analyze their possible mediating effects on the relationship between childhood depression and several areas related to child psychological adjustment. The sample comprised 336 children (46.7% girls) aged 8 - 12 years. Participants completed measures on depression symptoms (CDI), psychological strengths and difficulties (SDQ), and cognitive emotion regulation strategies (CERQ-Sk). Correlations and multiple regression analyses were conducted to test whether CERS, and child gender and age predicted child depression. Mediation analyses were run to identify the CERS that mediate the relationship between depression and daily psychological adjustment. On multiple regression, children who score higher in self-blame (β =.18, p < .01), catastrophizing (β =.24, p < .001), other-blame (β =.14, p ≤ .01), but lower in positive reappraisal (β = -.15, p ≤ .01), and females (β = .10, p < .05) were more likely to present higher scores in depression. The maladaptive CERS "other-blame" mediated a positive relationship between depression and conduct problems, and between depression and peer problems. Other-blame mediated a negative relationship between depression and prosocial behavior. In conclusion, this research provides evidence of which specific CERS mediate the emergence of psychopathology in vulnerable children, and provides clues for the proper orientation of psychological interventions in childhood.