Emotion regulation moderates the risk associated with the 5-HTT gene and stress in children.
Emotion
; 14(5): 930-9, 2014 Oct.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-24866526
ABSTRACT
Carrying a short allele in the serotonin transporter polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) while experiencing stressful environments is linked to elevated risk for depression. What might offset this risky combination of genes and environment? We hypothesized that individual-level factors may play a protective role. Specifically, we examined whether individuals' ability to decrease their stress responses via effective emotion regulation may be an important moderating factor and addressed this hypothesis in a socioeconomically diverse sample of 205 children aged 9-15 years. At-risk children (short-allele carriers in high-stress contexts) exhibited more depressive symptoms than other groups. Importantly, at-risk children who used effective emotion regulation did not exhibit increased depressive symptoms. These results have important implications for the basic science of understanding risk and resilience in addition to genes and environment, individuals' agentic ability to self-regulate may need to be considered as a critical third factor. Given that emotion regulation is learnable, these results also have strong public-health implications.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Stress, Psychological
/
Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
/
Depression
/
Emotions
/
Alleles
/
Serotonin Plasma Membrane Transport Proteins
Type of study:
Etiology_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Child
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Language:
En
Journal:
Emotion
Journal subject:
PSICOLOGIA
Year:
2014
Type:
Article