A silent pathway to depression: Social anxiety and emotional regulation as predictors of depressive symptoms

Abstract

Background: Social anxiety is the most common comorbid disorder in patients with major depressive disorder, almost always preceding it and aggravating its presentation and course. A possible mechanism to explain this relationship may well be the use of specific maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, common to depression and social anxiety. Objectives: This study aimed to explore, in an adolescent sample, if depression could be predicted by social anxiety and if emotion regulation strategies would mediated this relationship. Method: The sample included 527 adolescents from the general population (59.2% were girls; Mage = 13.8; SD = 7.57). Self-report scales measuring depression, social anxiety and cognitive emotion regulation were filled up. Results: Depression and social anxiety showed significant, positive and moderate correlations with all cognitive emotion regulation strategies (self-blame, catastrophizing and rumination), exception made for the correlation with other-blame, which was very low. The final mediation model explained 39 % of depressive symptomatology, with social anxiety having both a direct and an indirect effect. The only significant mediation variable that accounted for this indirect effect was self-blame. Conclusions: The results clearly point to the role of social anxiety in adolescents´ depressive symptoms either directly or indirectly, through self-blame. These results call attention to the importance of discriminating social anxious and depressive symptomatology offering specific preventive or therapeutic approaches for both conditions or including different components in these approaches to address both depression and social anxiety. Furthermore, effective intervention should also target specific cognitive emotion strategies. Theoretical and clinical implications were discussed.