Negative life events, cognitive emotion regulation and emotional problems

Abstract

A new questionnaire, named the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, has been constructed, measuring nine cognitive coping strategies people tend to use after having experienced negative life events. A test±retest design was used to study the psychometric properties and relationships with measures of depression and anxiety among 547 high school youngsters. Principal component analyses supported the allocation of items to subscales, while alphas of most subscales exceeded 0.80. Cognitive coping strategies were found to play an important role in the relationship between the experience of negative life events and the reporting of symptoms of depression and anxiety. The results suggest that cognitive coping strategies may be a valuable context of prevention and intervention #

Cognitive coping and childhood anxiety disorders

“…The CERQ-k is an adaptation of the original CERQ [9], which is suitable for adults and adolescents aged 12 years or older. The items of the original CERQ were simplified and shortened.…”

“…Life events that were measured are: (1) divorce of parents, (2) long-lasting or severe medical illness of brother/sister, (3) long-lasting or severe medical illness of parent(s), (4) long-lasting or severe medical illness of self, (5) death of parent(s), (6) death of brother/sister, (7) death of grandparent(s) (8) having been victim of a severe accident, (9) having been bullied a lot.…”

“…Such prevention and intervention programs could benefit from knowledge on the differential characteristics between clinically anxious and non-anxious children. Previous studies in adolescents and adults have shown that anxious and non-anxious individuals can be discriminated as to their use of specific cognitive coping strategies [9][10][11]. Cognitive coping, however, has never been examined in relation to childhood anxiety disorders before.…”

“…Cognitive coping can be defined as the cognitive way of managing the intake of emotionally arousing stimuli [6,9,30]. Cognitive coping is distinguished from other partially overlapping constructs, such as emotion regulation and mood regulation, by its predominant focus on decreasing negative affect in response to stressful situations [14,28].…”

“…The largest proportion of variance was explained by the strategies rumination, self-blame, and catastrophizing. These three strategies have also been related to anxiety symptoms in adolescents and adults from the general population [9][10][11]. Apparently, anxiety-disordered adolescents not only experience more negative life events, but also tend to use more cognitive coping strategies, especially maladaptive, than non-anxious adolescents.…”