Poster #211 - Negative Family Emotional Climate is Conditionally Related to Adolescent Depressive Symptoms via Emotional Suppression

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

A negative family emotional climate (NFEC) is related to adolescent depression (Luebbe & Bell, 2014). Yet, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Emotional suppression (i.e., inhibiting an emotion after it is generated; Gross, 1998) may mediate the relation between NFEC and adolescent depression due to its relation to depression (Betts et al., 2009). However, previous work has not examined the relation between NFEC and suppression. It is also unknown whether suppression’s role as a mediator is contingent upon adolescents’ gender, age, race, or family income. Girls are more likely to develop depressive symptoms (Salk et al., 2017), while boys are more likely to suppress their emotions (Gullone & Taffe, 2011). Older adolescents are also more likely to have depression (Merikangas et al., 2010), as well as non-white adolescents (Moon & Rao, 2010), and adolescents from lower socioeconomic status (Tracy et al., 2008). We hypothesized that gender, age, race, and family income would separately moderate the indirect effect of suppression from NFEC to depression, such that the indirect effect would be stronger for older, non-white, lower-income, and female adolescents.
Ninety-two adolescents (ages 11-18; 62% female; 80.4% European American; 47.8% < $40K annual family income) and their primary female caregivers participated. Adolescents completed the Family Expressiveness Questionnaire-Short Form (FEQ), the Psychological Control Scale (PCS), and the Child Report of Parent’s Behavior Inventory, Acceptance Scale (CRPBI-AS) at time 1. We created a composite variable for NFEC (negative FEQ, positive FEQ-reversed, PCS mom and dad, and CRPBI-AS-reversed mom and dad). At time 2, six months later, adolescents completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents and the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale. Adolescents also completed a demographics form that included their gender, age, and race. Their primary female caregivers provided family income.
Four moderated mediation models were conducted. In all models, NFEC was the independent variable, depression was the dependent variable, and emotional suppression was the mediator. The moderator changed in each model. We tested each moderator on both the “a” path and “b” path, removing non-significant interactions and re-running when appropriate (Figure 1). Sex and race significantly moderated the “b” path, but only family income was a significant moderator on the “a” path. Contrary to hypotheses, age was not a significant moderator on either path. Probing the interactions, we found that the indirect effect of suppression on NFEC and depression was significant for girls but not boys because suppression was related to depression only for girls. The indirect effect of suppression was also significant for both white and non-white adolescents, but the effect was stronger for non-white because suppression was only marginally related to depression for white adolescents. Surprisingly, suppression was a significant mediator at levels of family income greater than -0.61 SD because NFEC was only related to suppression at higher income.
Results demonstrate the importance of considering emotional suppression as a key target of intervention for adolescents who are non-white, wealthy, or female because it appears that these adolescents would benefit the most from such a targeted treatment approach.

Authors

• Feven Asresehei Ogbaselase, Miami University
  Presenting Author

• Aaron Luebbe, Miami University
  Non-Presenting Author