Morgan Preston C, Wittenborn Andrea K, Morlan Garrin L, Snyder Ryan
Human Development and Family Sciences, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078, USA.
Human Development and Family Studies, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2024 Dec 18;14(12):1215. doi: 10.3390/bs14121215.
Although adults with depression struggle to effectively emotionally regulate themselves, these findings are limited to one partner in a romantic relationship, community samples, and cross-sectional designs. Hence, we aimed to address these gaps in the literature by investigating emotion regulation difficulties as a predictor of change in depression among couples in couple therapy. Additionally, we aimed to investigate whether emotion regulation difficulties mediated the well-established association between relationship satisfaction and changes in depression of couples in couple therapy. We examined 484 different-sex couples in couple therapy from the Marriage and Family Therapy Practice Research Network-a clinical dataset from clinics across the United States. Dyadic latent growth models revealed the actor and partner effects of emotion regulation difficulties at session 1, predicting decreases in depression trajectories across 16 sessions of couple therapy. Additionally, dyadic latent growth mediation models revealed that emotion regulation difficulties at session four did not mediate the associations between relationship satisfaction at session 1 with depression trajectories of sessions eight through 16. For couple therapy clinicians, emotion regulation difficulties can play a direct role in the treatment of depression. However, our results did not support emotion regulation difficulties as a mediator for the well-established association between relationship satisfaction and depression trajectories.
尽管患有抑郁症的成年人难以有效地进行情绪自我调节，但这些研究结果仅限于浪漫关系中的一方、社区样本以及横断面设计。因此，我们旨在通过调查情绪调节困难作为夫妻治疗中夫妻抑郁变化的预测因素来填补文献中的这些空白。此外，我们旨在研究情绪调节困难是否介导了夫妻治疗中关系满意度与夫妻抑郁变化之间已确立的关联。我们研究了婚姻与家庭治疗实践研究网络中的484对不同性别的夫妻治疗案例——这是一个来自美国各地诊所的临床数据集。二元潜在增长模型揭示了第1阶段情绪调节困难的个体效应和伴侣效应，预测了在16次夫妻治疗过程中抑郁轨迹的下降。此外，二元潜在增长中介模型显示，第4阶段的情绪调节困难并未介导第1阶段的关系满意度与第8至16阶段的抑郁轨迹之间的关联。对于夫妻治疗临床医生来说，情绪调节困难在抑郁症治疗中可以发挥直接作用。然而，我们的结果并不支持情绪调节困难作为关系满意度与抑郁轨迹之间已确立关联的中介因素。
