Emotion regulation strategies and PTSS among children who experienced an explosion accident: the moderating role of trait mindfulness

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate the moderating role of trait mindfulness in the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) among children and adolescents who experienced an explosion accident. A total of 712 participants, aged 7–15, (M_age = 11.45, SD = 1.77; 48.9% male) who have experienced an explosion accident completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, the Trauma Screening Questionnaire and the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale. The results showed that trait mindfulness significantly moderated the relationship of the expressive suppression and PTSS under the control of sex, age, trauma exposure, and cognitive reappraisal strategy (β = −0.27, p < 0.05). However, the moderating effect of trait mindfulness between cognitive reappraisal strategy and PTSS was not significant (p> 0.05). Findings suggested that traumatized children with low levels of mindfulness may report severer PTSS when they adopt expressive suppression strategy.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion regulation strategies
• post-traumatic stress symptoms
• trait mindfulness
• moderating effect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [31800929]; China Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project [2018T110522]; Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, China [BK20171036].