The Influence of Emotional Regulation on the Relationship between Parental and Adolescent Depressive Symptoms in African-American Families

Introduction: Depression in adolescence is a public health concern because it predicts future depression, comorbidity with other disorders, and suicidality. While parents’ depressive symptoms have been shown to be related to adolescents’ depressive symptoms and emotion regulation, relatively fewer studies have examined these relationships in African-American families. While the risks associated with depression are detrimental for all adolescents, ethnic minority adolescents are less likely than European-American adolescents to receive mental health services, a disparity particularly pronounced for African-American adolescents. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between parental and adolescent depressive symptoms in African-American families, and whether adolescents’ emotional regulation abilities mediate this relationship.

Methods: Our analytic sample included 84 pairs of African-American adolescents and caregivers. Adolescent ages ranged from 11 to 16 years (M = 13.02, SD = 1.04) and 47% identified as female. All but two of the caregivers who completed the surveys were women and nearly all (86%) were the adolescents’ biological mother. Caregiver’s ages ranged from 26 to 71 (M = 39.21, SD = 8.69). Parental and adolescent depressive symptoms were measured using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale for adults (CESD-R) and adolescents (CES-DC). Emotional regulation was measured using the parent-report Emotional Regulation Checklist.

Results: Haye’s (2018) PROCESS macro version three for SPSS (Model 4) was used with 5,000 bootstrapped samples to analyze our study aim. Results indicated that parental depressive symptoms predicted adolescents’ emotional regulation abilities (b = -.62, 95% CI: [-1.08, -.16]), and that adolescents' emotional regulation abilities significantly predicted adolescents’ depressive symptoms (b = -.09, 95% CI: [-.15, -.02]). The range of estimated values for the indirect effect of parental depressive symptoms on adolescents' depressive symptoms mediated by adolescents' emotional regulation did not include 0, indicating a significant mediation effect (b = .05, 95% CI: [0.0085, .12]).

Discussion: Depressive disorders are among the most common disorders that adolescents experience and research has established that these disorders can lead to major impairments and negative future outcomes. Thus, better understanding the factors related to African-American adolescents’ depressive symptoms is essential to ensure we are creating appropriate resources and interventions for African-American adolescents and their caregivers.