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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1527120
This article is part of the Research Topic Mental Health of Vulnerable Groups: Predictors, Mechanisms, and Interventions View all 13 articles
Emotional regulation mechanisms regarding posttraumatic and depressive symptoms in maltreated youth
Provisionally accepted- University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
Maltreated youth are a particularly vulnerable group that often contends with multifaceted mental health challenges, especially symptoms of posttraumatic stress and depression. Emotional dysregulation may have a central role in linking victimization to youth psychopathology in this population, but few have examined the effect of specific mechanisms such as expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal in this regard. The present study examined these mechanisms vis-à-vis posttraumatic and depressive symptoms in a highly diverse sample of 133 youth aged 11-17 years who were removed from home following maltreatment. Expected positive relationships were found with respect to expressive suppression and total and cluster (i.e., intrusion, avoidance, alterations in cognition and mood, and alterations in arousal and reactivity) posttraumatic stress symptoms as well as depressive symptoms. Conversely, unexpected positive relationships were found with respect to cognitive reappraisal and these symptoms only for specific groups, notably males, younger youth, and those who had not experienced sexual maltreatment. The findings may have implications for tailoring clinical protocols for this vulnerable population, and may offer directions for integrating expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal into transdiagnostic models of psychopathology in youth.
Keywords: maltreatment1, Emotional regulation2, Expressive suppression3, cognitive reappraisal4, posttraumatic stress5, depression6
Received: 12 Nov 2024; Accepted: 13 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ellis and Kearney. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Christopher Kearney, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, 89154, Nevada, United States
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