Emotion regulation and anxiety disorder symptoms: Within-person relations from ages 6 to 18 in a birth cohort

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BACKGROUND: Emotion regulation difficulties have been implicated as a risk factor for anxiety disorders in youth, but prospective studies disentangling within-person from between-person effects are needed to substantiate such a claim. We therefore tested the bidirectional, within-person relations between emotion regulation and symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, specific phobia, and social anxiety from 1st grade to late adolescence. METHODS: Participants were 911 children and adolescents from the Trondheim Early Secure Study, a Norwegian birth cohort sample assessed biennially from ages 6 to 18. Emotion regulation was reported by parents and teachers. Anxiety symptoms were assessed using structured diagnostic interviews. Results from Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models (RI-CLPM) were contrasted with those from ordinary Cross-lagged Panel Models (CLPM). Age and sex differences were examined. RESULTS: According to CLPM, lower emotion regulation, as reported by both parents and teachers and across ages and sexes, predicted a higher number of anxiety symptoms two years later, and vice versa. However, according to RI-CLPM, apart from two paths in the model of parent-reported emotion regulation with specific phobia, no prospective within-person associations were found. CONCLUSIONS: Prospective relations between emotion regulation and anxiety may primarily be due to common factors linking the two, as these associations are no longer significant when time-invariant confounding is accounted for and within- and between-person effects are disentangled. Our results do not support the hypothesis that poor emotion regulation increases the risk of developing anxiety disorder symptoms.

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