Being able to differentiate between negative emotions reduces risk of depression
Franco Greco • December 8, 2019
Recent study indicates that teenagers who struggle to differentiate between negative emotions are more likely to experience depression
My recent post (refer to 21 November 2019) discussed 'labelling our emotions' as an important first step in dealing with them.
An article by Emma Young (a staff writer at BPS Research Digest, link to article refer references), provides further support to this issue. She argues that:
"The first step to dealing with a negative emotion is to identify it. If you’re feeling irritated, restless or guilty, the most effective way to start feeling better will be different in each case.
The trouble is, if your sense of your own emotions is not that fine-grained – if you feel just “bad” or “upset” – you may struggle to identify the cause of your distress, making it tricky to self-regulate your emotions."
Recent Study on Teenagers
The article reports on a recent study by Lisa Starr at the University of Rochester and her colleagues that conducted a longitudinal study on adolescents, (refer to references for the link).
They looked not only at teenagers’ Negative Emotional Differentiation (NED) and depressive symptoms over time, but also their experience of minor daily hassles and more serious stressful life events.
The researchers found that the teenagers who during the week-long survey period were relatively poor at differentiating between negative emotions were also more likely to suffer a transiently depressed mood after a minor hassle.
Eighteen months on, they also had higher levels of depressive symptoms – but only if their exposure to stressful life events during that period had been high.
Why is the inability to distinguish between negative emotions a risk factor for depression?
People with difficulties discriminating between and labelling [negative emotions] may fail to orient to the causes and consequences of their emotional responses to stressors, leaving them less prepared to effectively down-regulate [negative emotions].
Such deficits in emotion regulation may in turn make the emotional aftermath of stressors more difficult to manage and lead to the development of depressive symptoms.
What are the key opportunities from this study?
While this study focused on teenagers, there is a broader applicability here.
It is important to teach people to understand and recognise a broader range of emotions (usually negative ones).
It has been shown to lessen the intensity of negative emotions and encourage appropriate responses.
Given the new data from the study, that it may also protect against the development of depression.
Moreover, the the finding that NED interacts with environmental stress to predict depression suggests it is especially important to target interventions at high-risk, stress-exposed youth.
References
This material from this article draws significantly from Emma Young's article which can be found at
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/07/23/teens-who-struggle-to-differentiate-their-negative-emotions-are-more-prone-to-stress-induced-depression/
The research study and link is detailed below:
Starr, L. R., Hershenberg, R., Shaw, Z. A., Li, Y. I., & Santee, A. C. (2019). The perils of murky emotions: Emotion differentiation moderates the prospective relationship between naturalistic stress exposure and adolescent depression. Emotion. Advance online publication.
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