Emotion regulation profiles and mental health outcomes in American Indian adults

The strategies used to down regulate negative emotions or upregulate positive emotions are implicated in mood disorders, such as depression, and internalizing disorders, such as anxiety. Emotion regulation (ER) and mental health is largely understudied in American Indian (AI) populations. The limited extant data suggests that the rates of anxiety and depression symptoms are higher in AIs compared to the national average. Further, prior research shows that infrequent use of emotion reappraisal and frequent use of suppression is linked to symptoms of stress and depression in American Indian adults reporting childhood trauma. It is possible that ER strategies may cluster into unique profiles and inform differences in mental health amongst AIs. The following work expands prior literature by utilizing an extensive ER strategy questionnaire and explores how different levels of usage of ER strategies uniquely associate with reports of anxiety and depression in a sample of American Indian adults in 2022.