Variability in emotion regulation strategy use in major depressive disorder: Flexibility or volatility?

Background: Emotion regulation is critical for psychological health. Adaptive emotion regulation, in particular, requires the ability to flexibly use different strategies to meet situational demands. Such flexibility is often reflected in greater variability in everyday emotion regulation strategy use. Research on strategy variability has, to date, been positively associated with some emotional and psychological outcomes, but such research has exclusively focused on healthy individuals. Our investigation examines whether variability in emotion regulation strategy use and its implications differ between individuals with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and healthy controls.

Method: Using ecological momentary assessments (EMA), we assessed variability in emotion regulation strategy use (i.e., between-strategy variability) and its implications in individuals with current MDD and healthy controls (Ns = 94 and 90). Participants completed six surveys per day for 10 days, rating their emotional experiences and emotion regulation strategy use. They also rated indices of psychological health daily.

Results: Individuals with MDD had higher emotion regulation strategy variability than healthy controls. In healthy controls, higher strategy variability was linked to greater emotion regulation success and was unrelated to daily depressive symptoms. However, in individuals with MDD, higher strategy variability was not only unrelated or even negatively linked to emotion regulation success, but it was also associated with higher daily depressive symptoms.

Limitations: We did not assess the fit between regulatory strategies and contexts, and only included self-report measures collected through smartphones.

Conclusion: Variability in emotion regulation strategy use may capture adaptive flexibility among healthy individuals, but maladaptive volatility among individuals with MDD.