Assessment of cognitive emotion regulation strategies in people with major depression and generalized anxiety disorder

Objective: In this study, it was aimed to examine the differences in the individuals at clinical settings with Major Depressive Disorder and Genaralized Anxiety Disorder according to their cognitive emotion regulation strategies and compare them with healthy individuals. Method:This cross-sectional study included 62 people who applied to the psychiatry outpatient clinic in 2 different state hospitals between December 2016 and March 2017.The Sociodemographic Information Form, Cognitive Emotion Regulation Scale, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, Hamilton Anxiety Scale and Structured Clinical Interview Guideline for DSM-IV-TR Axis I Disorders were applied as researching tools.Collected data from the study were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) for Windows program.In the evaluation of the data, one way Anova test were used. The Tukey test was used as a complementary post-hoc analysis to determine the differences after the Anova test.Pearson correlation analysis were applied among the continuous variables of the study. The findings were evaluated at the 95% confidence interval and at the 5% significance level. Results: As a result of the research, the cognitive emotion regulation strategies of those who had major depression or general anxiety in the clinical setting were found to be consistent with the previous studies in the literature. Conclusion: Adaptive cognitive emotion regulation scores of the healthy group were found higher than the adaptive cognitive emotion regulation scores of the depression group and the adaptive cognitive emotion regulation scores of the anxiety group. The maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation scores of the depression and anxiety group were higher than maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation scores of the healthy group. The Tukey analysis of which cognitive emotion regulation strategies are used by the groups is revealed. According to the findings of the study, several suggestions have been made that may be useful for future studies.