Emotion regulation among individuals classified with and without generalized anxiety disorder

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Abstract

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) has been conceptualized as being characterized by the experience of intense emotion, limited understanding of the emotional experience, poor ability to adaptively modulate emotions, and an aversive response to emotions [Mennin, D. S., Turk, C. L., Heimberg, R. G., & Carmin, C. N. (2004). Focusing on the regulation of emotion: a new direction for conceptualizing and treating generalized anxiety disorder. In: M. A. Reinecke, & D. A. Clark (Eds.), Cognitive therapy over the lifespan: theory, research and practice (pp. 60–89). New York: Wiley]. In order to test aspects of this model, participants completed daily diaries and a questionnaire measuring emotion regulation strategies. As hypothesized, relative to controls, individuals classified as having GAD reported more intense daily emotional experiences. Contrary to predictions and previous research, those with GAD did not show poor emotion differentiation and used several emotion regulation strategies more often than control participants. The implications for both the emotion dysregulation model and treatment of GAD are discussed.

Section snippets

Participants

In the present study, 138 undergraduate and graduate students (111 women) participated. Participants were screened for the presence or absence of GAD according to the procedures described below. Overall, 33 participants (32 women) were classified as having GAD; 105 participants (79 women) were classified as control participants.

Measures

The Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ; Meyer, Miller, Metzger, & Borkovec, 1990) is a self-report measure of the excessiveness, uncontrollability and pervasiveness of

Preliminary analyses

As shown in Table 1, the GAD-classified and control groups did not differ by age, t(136) = 1.19, p = ns, d = .20, ethnicity, χ2(3,N = 138) = 1.16, p = ns, phi = .09, or marital status, χ2(2,N = 138) = 1.82, p = ns, phi = .12. However, a significant gender difference was found, χ2(1,N = 138) = 7.54, p < .05, phi = .23. Although the GAD literature suggests a gender difference in prevalence rates favoring women (Wittchen, Zhao, Kessler, & Eaton, 1994), the gender differences in the current study were larger than expected.

Discussion

The present study lends partial support for Mennin et al.'s (2004) model and further elucidates the psychological processes involved in GAD. Consistent with the model, individuals classified as having GAD rated their most emotional experience of the day as more intense than control participants. Previous research has found more intense emotional experiencing among individuals with GAD according to responses to the Impulse Strength subscale of the Berkley Expressivity Questionnaire (BEQ; Gross &

Acknowledgements

The data reported herein are from the first author's doctoral dissertation, completed under the supervision of the second author. The authors wish to thank Deena Sadiky and David Gomez for their help with data collection. The authors also wish to thank Dr. Randy Fingerhut for his helpful input.

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