Disentangling the developmental and conceptual links between emotion dysregulation, self-regulation and internalizing and externalizing difficulties in childhood: a longitudinal investigation

There is a close association between emotion regulation and mental ill-health but how they influence each other over time is unclear. The close association between the constructs also raises the question of how conceptually distinct or similar they are. We use data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study to investigate temporal and conceptual relationships between emotion regulation and mental health difficulties in childhood.Data from 16,859 children were analysed. The analytic sample included 48.85% female and 51.15% male participants. Ethnic representation was 82.3% White, 3.04% Mixed, 9.4% Asian, and 3.6% as Black or Black British. Study 1 used a cross-lagged model to assess bi-directional effects and temporal sequencing between internalizing and externalizing symptoms and emotion regulation at ages 3, 5, 7 years. We found cascading effects across all ages, whereby emotion dysregulation predicted later mental health difficulties, and externalizing symptoms predicted later emotion dysregulation. Study 2 used a hierarchical bi-factor model, which demonstrated a substantial overlap between the constructs during childhood, with the bi-factor explaining between .52 and .58 of the variance. We also tested the predictive utility of the included factors, of which the bifactor was the best predictor of self-harm and depression symptoms at age 14. Our findings demonstrate a significant overlap between emotion regulation and mental ill-health, which are intrinsically linked with no clear indication of which comes first. Further investigation of this relationship with more comprehensive measures is necessary to reliably inform intervention and prevention efforts.