Teen Depressives Are Less Expressive

Main Category: Depression
Also Included In: Psychology / Psychiatry;  Mental Health
Article Date: 12 May 2009 - 0:00 PDT

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Teenagers who don't express their emotions are more likely to suffer from depressive symptoms. This is the finding of a study published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

The study, carried out by Jennifer Betts, Eleonora Gullone and Sabura Allen at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, looked at the emotion regulation strategies of 44 teenagers aged 12 to 16 with a high level of depressive symptoms and compared them to the strategies of 44 adolescents with no symptoms.

Eleonora Gullone said: "We found that the teenagers with symptoms of depression suppressed the expression of their emotions significantly more than their non-depressed peers. The teenagers with no depressive symptoms instead reported high levels of 'cognitive reappraisal' - these teenagers were able to think about potentially negative events and re-frame them in a more positive way. For example, rather than seeing a poor assignment grade as a sign of failure, they would see it as a way to improve their future performance.

"As depression is a debilitating disorder it's important that we understand more about the emotion regulation strategies that depressed adolescents are using. By doing so we can develop psychological therapies that target problem strategies and reduce depressive thinking."

The study also discovered that more depressed teens reported having less caring, more overprotective parents than the non-depressed group. However it is unclear from this study whether perceived parenting style was a cause or was a result of the adolescents' depressive symptoms.

Source
The British Psychological Society