Abstract:
Objective: In recent years, there has been a rising interest in cognitive behavioral research
to explore the role of emotion regulation in the development and maintenance of mental
disorders and resiliency against or recovery from them. Particularly, different strategies people
use to regulate their emotions may have more important role in emotional disorders including
depression. The aim of this article is to review the recent literature focusing on the role of ER
in depression.
Methods: In this paper, we present a brief review of the latest studies (in English and Persian)
regarding depression and 6 relevant emotion-regulation strategies (i.e. suppression, rumination,
experiential avoidance, reappraisal, mindfulness, and acceptance). Then, we attempt to
integrate findings of these cognitive-behavioral and neurobiological investigations utilizing
the Gross`s process model of emotion regulation.
Results: According to the research results, we can generally conclude that emotion regulation
may be an important mediator/moderator mechanism in the pathogenesis of depression that
could also be a good target for intervention in psychotherapy.
Conclusion: Some challenging issues in this area are noted and their implications for cognitivebehavioral
research and therapies are discussed.
Machine summary:
Article info: Received: 14 Mar. 2014 Accepted: 23 June 2014 Keywords: Depression, Emotion regulation, Suppression, Reappraisal, Rumination, Mindfulness, Experiential avoidance, Emotional acceptance A B S T R A C T Objective: In recent years, there has been a rising interest in cognitive behavioral research to explore the role of emotion regulation in the development and maintenance of mental disorders and resiliency against or recovery from them.
In this regard, some problems in emotional states such as altered emotional reactivity and associated emotion dysregulation, has been considered in re- cent theory and research to have important role in depressive and related psychological disorders (Bylsma, Morris, & Rot- tenberg, 2008; Liverant, Brown, Barlow, & Roemer, 2008).
Emotion which is classified in the superordi- nate category of affective states (Gross & Thompson, 2007) {Gross, 2007 #23;Berking, 2012 #22}, has typically rapid onset and short duration (Ekman, 1992), and usually focuses * Corresponding Author: Parvaneh Mohammadkhani, PhD Address: Full Professor in Psychology, Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Empirical examinations of emotion regulation strate- gies in depression In the literature, many different ER strategies were dis- tinguished such as suppression, reappraisal, avoidance, self-blame, other-blame, rumination, catastrophizing, posi- tive refocusing, planning, problem solving, mindfulness, acceptance, engaging in goal-directed behaviors, and com- passionately support oneself in distressing situations (Gross & John, 2003; Garnefski & Kraaij, 2006; Gratz & Roemer, 2004; Berking et al.
In one treatment study (Berking, Neacsiu, Comtois, & Line- han, 2009), reductions in EA, were predictive of the im- provements in depressive symptoms among patients with borderline personality disorder.