Latent types of cognitive emotion regulation strategies among middle school students in China and its effect on depressive symptoms.

Objective: To explore the latent categories of cognitive emotion regulation strategies among middle school students in China and their effect on depressive symptoms.

Methods: The 535 (13.51 ± 0.93 years; 55.33 % males, 44.67 % females) middle school students from southwestern regions in China were recruited using Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire-Chinese Version and Patient Health Questionnaire-9. Correlation analysis, latent profile analysis and Bolck-Croon-Hagenaars (BCH) analysis were used to explore the latent categories of cognitive emotion regulation strategies and to analyze the relationship between latent categories and depressive symptoms.

Results: The depressive symptoms prevalence among middle school students was 30.47 %. There are four latent types of cognitive emotion regulation strategies: weak cognitive emotion regulation strategy (Weak CERS), high positive cognitive emotion regulation strategy (High Positive CERS), moderate and slightly negative cognitive emotion regulation strategy (Moderate and Slightly negative CERS) and high negative cognitive emotion regulation strategy (High Negative CERS). The BCH analysis shows the scores of depressive symptoms are significantly different among four profiles of CERQ-C (Wald χ2 = 173.04, p < 0.001) and the scores of depressive symptoms are obviously different between the four profiles (Wald χ2 = 4.67-171.37, ps < 0.05) except between profile 2 and 3 (Wald χ2 = 1.376, p > 0.05).

Conclusions: The level of depressive symptoms among middle school students from southwestern regions in China is relatively high, and their cognitive emotion regulation strategies can be divided into four types, having significant effects on depressive symptoms.