ADHD- AND AGE-DEPENDENT DEPRESSION EFFECTS DIFFERENTIALLY PREDICT PROSPECTIVE CHANGES IN ADOLESCENT EMOTION DYSREGULATION

Emotion dysregulation (ED) is a key correlate and risk factor of a range of externalizing and internalizing disorders and symptoms and a core target for psychopharmacologic and psychosocial interventions. Adolescence is arguably the most important developmental period for acquisition of adaptive, adult-like emotion regulation skills and, as such, a particularly vulnerable phase for the development of ED. Gaps in knowledge remain about normative changes in emotion regulation across time in adolescence or about intraindividual characteristics that predict those changes. We examined, in 241 adolescents (Mage=15.73 years, SD=.1.07, 60.2% boys), (1) developmental patterns in emotion regulation across 18 months, (2) whether ADHD risk status and relevant clinical and demographic variables predict those patterns, and in a subsample of 84 adolescents (Mage=14.84 years, SD=.5245), (3) whether ADHD risk status and relevant clinical and demographic variables, including level of biological maturity, predict developmental patters. Findings indicated average ED scores did not change across time but also that considerable individual-level heterogeneity in the direction and magnitude of changes accounted for lack of group-level differences. Results also showed ADHD risk and depression had opposing effects on changes in ED across time such that ADHD risk status was associated with a relative decrease or stagnation of ED, but earlier development of elevated depression problems predicted an increase in ED. These results indirectly support the delay in brain maturation hypothesis of ADHD such that adolescents at-risk for ADHD, relative to adolescents not at-risk, albeit exhibited higher ED at baseline, showed a reduction in ED by follow-up. Results are also consistent with conceptual models of the relation between ED and internalizing problems being a reciprocal process with developmentally earlier onset of elevated depression as a risk factor for the exacerbation of ED.