The temporal association between emotional clarity and depression symptoms in adolescents

Low emotional clarity, that is, problems in understanding and identifying one's own emotions, is generally seen as related to depression. Most empirical studies on this topic focused on the link between low levels of emotional clarity predicting depression problems, fewer studies on depression symptoms predicting low emotional clarity. All studies were restricted to unidirectional associations. The present study evaluated the reciprocal associations between emotional clarity and depression symptoms. Additionally, we tested the role of rumination as a mediator of the links between depression symptoms and emotional clarity.

For the main analyses, data of 230 Dutch participants (M_age = 13.40, SD = 2.24; 48% girls) over three time points of a 5-year longitudinal study were used. Depression symptoms, emotional clarity, and rumination were self-reported. Cross-lagged panel analysis was used to test a model of reciprocal associations between depression symptoms and emotional clarity against models of unidirectional associations. The role of rumination as mediator and sex as moderator in the links between depression symptoms and emotional clarity were evaluated in separate analyses on a subsample (n = 151).

A model of reciprocal associations where depression symptoms and low emotional clarity predict relatively high scores of the other over time offered a good representation of the data. Rumination mediated the link between depression symptoms predicting prospective emotional clarity for both sexes. These findings suggest a vicious cycle between depression symptoms and low emotional clarity. We discuss possible implications of these results for the treatment of depression in youth.