Poster #19 - Shared and Differential Emotional Characteristics of Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms among Chinese Adolescents

• In Event: Poster Session 15

Abstract

Depressive and anxiety symptoms are common emotional problems in adolescents and share emotional characteristics (Kalin, 2020). Researchers have also identified the uniqueness of these two symptoms, but is limited by their scopes (e.g., Western samples and adults). Adolescence is a period characterized by heightened emotion intensity and instability. Adolescents are at high risk for suffering depressive and anxiety symptoms, which may even worsen into mental disorders and persist into adulthood (Clayborne et al., 2019; de Lijster, 2016). Moreover, the emotional characteristics of depressive and anxiety symptoms may be heterogeneous across cultures, yet few studies have included non-Western samples. Taken together, the present study aimed to comprehensively investigate the shared and differential emotional characteristics (intensity and instability of negative and positive emotions, emotion regulation) of depressive and anxiety symptoms among Chinese adolescents.


Participants were 315 seventh-grade adolescents (48.3% girls, Mage = 13.05 years, SD = 0.77 years). Depressive symptoms were measured by the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977), and anxiety symptoms were reported with the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED; Birmaher et al., 1999). Adolescents reported their negative and positive emotions via the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson et al., 1988) each weekday for two weeks. Positive and negative emotion intensities were each calculated by averaging corresponding everyday emotion level across days. Emotion instabilities indicated the magnitude of day-to-day emotion fluctuations and were indexed by root mean square of successive difference score of emotions across days. Adolescent Emotion regulation was reported by both adolescents themselves as well as their main caregivers. Specifically, adolescent rated 36 items from Children’s Emotion Management Scales, CEMS; Zeman et al., 2001, 2010) including emotion coping, inhibition, and dysregulation. Parents rated their children’s emotion regulation and liability via the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC; Shields & Cicchetti, 1997). Symptoms of depression and anxiety were treated as separate predictors and indicators of emotion functioning were grouped by three differential sources (i.e., daily emotions via the diary approach, adolescent-reported emotion regulation, and parent-reported emotion regulation), yielding six (2 symptoms × 3 sources) separate regression models.

Results showed that higher levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms both were associated with higher levels of adolescent-rated emotion dysregulation and more intensified and unstable negative emotions. In addition, heightened depressive symptoms was associated with dampened positive emotion intensity but not instability, whereas heightened anxiety symptom was associated with positive emotion instability but not intensity. Adolescents with higher depressive symptoms also tend to report lower levels of emotion coping and be rated as more emotionally dysregulated by their parents (i.e., higher emotion negativity and lower emotion regulation).

The current study is among the first research to examine the shared and differential emotion characteristics of depressive and anxiety symptoms in Chinese adolescents. Results indicate that both depressive and anxiety symptoms impaired adolescent emotion functioning, but depressive symptoms were associated with a wider range of emotion disturbance. Future studies should consider more nuanced emotion indicators with longitudinal designs among differential samples.

Authors

• Shumeng Yang, Beijing Normal University
  Presenting Author

• Hui Wang, Beijing Normal University

• Jianjie Xu, Beijing Normal University

• Sihan Liu, Beijing Normal University

• Xiaofang Weng

• Zhuo Rachel Han, Beijing Normal University