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Identifying Specific Emotion Regulation Deficits that Associate with Nonsuicidal Self-injury and Suicide Ideation in Adolescents

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Abstract

It is not known how emotion regulation deficits and strategies may differentially relate to nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) and suicide ideation in samples of community-based adolescents. The current study examined emotion regulation using comprehensive multi-method assessment to identify which specific deficits are uniquely related to NSSI and suicide ideation in a sample of high school students. Regarding specific deficits, it was expected that lack of emotional awareness, lack of access to emotion regulation strategies, poor cognitive reappraisal, and poorer automatic emotion processing would uniquely associate with past-year NSSI engagement. It was also predicted that lack of access to strategies, lack of impulse control, lack of awareness, and nonacceptance of emotion would uniquely associate with past-year presence of suicide ideation and suicide ideation severity. The sample included 696 adolescents (54.8% female; ages 14–17; mean age = 15.5) recruited from public high schools. Self-report measures were administered assessing suicide ideation, NSSI engagement, dimensions of emotion regulation, and automatic emotion processing (Emotion Stroop). Emotion suppression was the only unique and significant predictor of past-year NSSI engagement, and lack of access to emotion regulation strategies was the strongest predictor of both past-year presence of suicide ideation and recent suicide ideation severity when accounting for all deficits in the same model. Acquiring emotion regulation skills during the period of adolescence has great potential to buffer from occurrence of NSSI and severity of suicide ideation.

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Authors' Contributions

A.B. conceived of the study, participated in the design and coordination of the study, participated in data collection, participated in interpretation of the data, and drafted the manuscript; R.C. participated in the coordination of the study and data collection and helped to draft the manuscript; A.L. performed the statistical analyses and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health under Award Number R15MH113045-1 and by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences under Award Number P20GM103436.

Data Sharing and Declaration

Data used in this study are available through the NIMH Data Archive (collection #2972).

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  1. Department of Psychological Sciences, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY, USA

    Amy M. Brausch & Rebekah B. Clapham

  2. Department of Psychological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

    Andrew K. Littlefield

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Brausch, A.M., Clapham, R.B. & Littlefield, A.K. Identifying Specific Emotion Regulation Deficits that Associate with Nonsuicidal Self-injury and Suicide Ideation in Adolescents. J Youth Adolescence 51, 556–569 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01525-w

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