Maternal emotion regulation abilities affect adolescent depressive symptoms by mediating their emotion regulation ability: An ERP study

Adolescents with major depressive disorder (MDD) experience significant difficulties in emotion regulation. This study aimed to explore emotion regulation in adolescents with depression using an emotion regulation paradigm combined with event-related potentials (ERP) while investigating the relationship between maternal emotion regulation and adolescent depressive symptoms through a mediation model. Overall, 38 healthy controls (HC) and 57 adolescents with depression (MDD) rated the pictures they saw according to aversive reappraisal (reappraisal of an aversive picture or down-regulate aversive emotions), aversive watch, and neutral conditions. Adolescents with depression gave more negative ratings to aversive images, and the emotional regulation success index (ERSI) of adolescents with depression was lower than that of healthy individuals. ERP data revealed an elevation in late positive potential (LPP) amplitude during the aversive reappraisal and aversive watch conditions compared with that in the neutral condition in the MDD group. Compared with the HC group, adolescents with depression showed larger LPP amplitudes under aversive watch conditions. The aversive reappraisal condition evoked a larger LPP than that in the other conditions in the HC group in the late time windows. The ΔLPP (separating the variability in the ERP wave associated with emotion regulation) was larger in the HC group than in the MDD group. Mediation analysis revealed that maternal emotion regulation influenced adolescent depression levels through its effect on the adolescent’s emotion regulation. These findings provide important insights into the emotion regulation process in adolescents with depression and offer suggestions for clinical interventions.