Emotion Regulation Partially Mediates the Relation Between Stressful Life Event Exposure and Adolescent Psychopathology

Abstract

Stressful life event exposure (SLEE) is robustly linked with adolescent psychopathology, and prior work suggests emotion regulation (ER) may mediate this relation. However, research incorporating experiences of gender diverse (GD) adolescents has been lacking, despite elevated rates of SLEE and psychopathology in GD individuals. This study examined gender and sex differences in relations between SLEE, ER, and psychopathology in the longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. One thousand five hundred eighty-one cisgender (cis) boys, 1439 cis girls, and 169 GD adolescents reported SLEE via the Life Events Scale in early adolescence (M±SD: 12.00±0.65 years), ER difficulties via the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-Parent Report one year later (M±SD: 12.93±0.64 years), and internalizing and externalizing psychopathology symptoms via the Brief Problem Monitor-Youth Report an additional year later (M±SD: 14.13±0.68 years). Mediation and moderated mediation analyses were conducted using conditional process modeling. ER difficulties partially mediated relations between SLEE and psychopathology symptoms. Gender moderated relations between SLEE and internalizing symptoms, but not externalizing symptoms, such that direct relations between SLEE and internalizing symptoms were stronger for GD youth and cis girls compared to cis boys. Moderated mediation models with gender as the moderator explained more variance in internalizing symptoms compared to models with sex as the moderator, while models with gender and sex explained similar amounts of variance in externalizing symptoms. Findings highlighted: (1) ER difficulties as a partial mediator of relations between SLEE and psychopathology, and (2) differences in direct relations between SLEE and internalizing symptoms based on gender.