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Emotional Awareness in Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms in Youth: A Meta-Analytic Review

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Abstract

Emotion regulation is assumed to play an important role in depressive and anxiety symptoms in youth. However, the role of core components of emotion regulation, such as emotional awareness, is not well understood so far. Thus this meta-analysis aimed to examine the relationship between depressive and anxiety symptoms with emotional awareness in youth. A systematic literature search (PsycINFO, Medline, Google Scholar) identified 21 studies, from which 34 effect sizes were extracted. Results from random effects models showed that difficulties in emotional awareness were significantly correlated with a medium effect size for each, depressive and anxiety symptoms separately, and for their combined effects (overall outcome). Additionally, further analyses revealed that age was a significant moderator of the relationship between emotional awareness with depressive and anxiety symptoms, with younger samples (mean age ≤ 12 years) showing a stronger association between difficulties in emotional awareness and depressive and anxiety symptoms as compared to older samples (mean age > 12 years). The results suggest that emotional awareness may be of relevance for depressive and anxiety symptoms in youth. Future work is required to examine longitudinal developments, moderators, and mediators in multi-method approaches. Moreover, children and adolescents may benefit from interventions that aim to enhance emotional awareness.

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Notes

  1. In the literature, the related construct of Alexithymia (Sifneos 1973) and the broader term Emotion Identification Skills which also comprise emotion clarity, emotion perception and mood labeling (Ciarrochi et al. 2008) are often being used as interchangeable with emotional awareness. However, in contrast to broader conceptualizations of emotional awareness, these terms mainly focus on identifying and differentiating one’s own emotions, disregarding both the ongoing analysis of their causes and consequences and the ability to perceive emotional experiences of others (Lane and Schwartz 1987). In some cases, components of emotional intelligence overlap with the construct of emotional awareness (Fernandez-Berrocal et al. 2006).

  2. We would like to note that we focus on depressive and anxiety symptoms in accordance with previous work (Schäfer et al. 2016) and due to the methodological requirements of meta-analytic procedures with regard to the number of available effect sizes which was not given for other symptom groups that may be of interest.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to note that the funders had no role in the design of the review, collection, analysis or interpretation of the literature, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the German Scholarship Foundation or the Swiss National Science Foundation. We would like to thank Laya Lehner for her excellent support in the preparation of this manuscript.

Funding

Johanna Ö. Schäfer is supported by the German Scholarship foundation. Andrea C. Samson was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) [grant number PZ00P1-154937].

Authors’ Contributions

LS did the literature search, analyzed the data and helped draft the manuscript; the results of the literature search and parts of the meta-analytic calculations were used in LS’s master’s thesis. JÖS conceived of the study, analyzed and interpreted the data and wrote the manuscript. ACS conceived of the study, interpreted the data and wrote the manuscript. EN conceived of the study, interpreted the data and wrote the manuscript. BTC conceived of the study, interpreted the data and wrote the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Lena Sendzik, Johanna Ö. Schäfer & Brunna Tuschen-Caffier

  2. Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Andrea C. Samson

  3. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

    Andrea C. Samson

  4. Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Eva Naumann

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  1. Lena Sendzik
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  2. Johanna Ö. Schäfer
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  3. Andrea C. Samson
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  4. Eva Naumann
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  5. Brunna Tuschen-Caffier
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Johanna Ö. Schäfer.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interest.

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All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Lena Sendzik and Johanna Ö. Schäfer shared first authorship.

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Sendzik, L., Ö. Schäfer, J., C. Samson, A. et al. Emotional Awareness in Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms in Youth: A Meta-Analytic Review. J Youth Adolescence 46, 687–700 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0629-0

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