Emotion Regulation and Emotional Expression in Adolescence: A Comparison of Clinical and Non-Clinical Adolescents

Mental health problems are prevalent in the Australian adolescent population and have potentially devastating consequences if left untreated. Evidence now indicates that in adult populations, poor emotion regulation and difficulties with emotional expression are related to mental health problems, in addition to wellbeing more broadly. However, these relationships remain poorly understood among adolescents, and in particular, there is a paucity of research investigating how emotion expression and the capacity for emotion regulation are affected in adolescents that present with mental health problems. The current study compared 42 adolescents diagnosed with a psychiatric condition to 45 demographically matched controls on behavioural and self-report measures of these constructs. It was predicted that in comparison to non-clinical controls, the clinical group would report experiencing greater difficulties with emotion regulation overall, and would be less able to follow instructions to amplify the display of emotion that they were feeling when viewing positive or negatively valenced stimuli. However, it was predicted that the control and clinical group would not differ significantly when instructed to suppress their emotional expression. It was also anticipated that poorer capacity for emotion regulation would be associated with lower levels of wellbeing and higher levels of psychopathology in both groups. All key predictions were supported. Of particular interest was the finding that the clinical group had greater difficulty enhancing the expression of both positive and negative emotion. Given the clear functional importance of being able to effectively convey both positive and negative affective states, these data have potentially important implications. These implications, in addition to the strengths, limitations and directions for future research, are discussed