Emotion regulation repertoires predict the risk of major depressive disorder.

Abstract

Background: Few studies explored emotion regulation (ER) repertoires (the tendency to utilize multiple ER strategies in different contexts) in patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). It remains unclear to what extent emotion regulation (ER) repertoires can assess the risk of MDD and other psychiatric disorders.

Method: Three subsamples including 1397 non-clinical individuals, 135 MDD patients, and 127 healthy controls (HCs) were combined to explore ER repertoires. We further built classifiers of ER repertoires to distinguish MDD patients from HCs, and additionally examined its performance based on published studies (total N = 4918).

Results: Adaptive, average, maladaptive, and intensely maladaptive repertoires were identified. The classifier based on ER repertoires can effectively distinguish MDD patients from HCs, demonstrating an AUC of 0.803 (SD = 0.067). Additionally, the classifier exhibited discriminatory power for various psychopathologies in published studies, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, PTSD, and personality disorders (AUC: 0.616-0.779).

Limitations: Future studies should investigate the longitudinal influence of ER repertoires on the development of psychopathologies.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that an individual's ER repertoire is a critical psychopathological risk that can serve as a valuable indicator for assessing risk and imply the potential utility of reforming ER repertoire.