Associations between ADHD symptoms and emotion regulation strategy utilisation in daily life: A dynamic structural equation modelling analysis

Background: Attention deficit hyperactivity (ADHD) symptoms are related to emotion regulation difficulties which, in turn, are thought to contribute to negative outcomes such as mental health, social and behavioural difficulties. Emotion regulation theory suggests that the use of emotion regulation strategies is an important component of emotion regulation; however, whether and in which ways this may be disrupted by ADHD symptoms remains unclear. Capturing emotion regulation strategy use in daily life is particularly valuable for illuminating the reasons underlying emotion regulation difficulties in ADHD. Method: We used dynamic structural equation modelling (DSEM) to explore the associations between ADHD symptoms and the dynamics of four emotion regulation strategies in daily life: acceptance, rumination, cognitive reappraisal, and expressive suppression. We used data from the D2M study (n= 451, nobservations =16,129), a two-week ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study of young adults. Results: ADHD symptoms were associated with higher levels of negative affect, rumination and suppression in daily life, as well as lower use of reappraisal and acceptance. Subtler emotion regulation dynamics such as the strength of relations between strategy use and subsequent negative affect and between negative affect and subsequent strategy use were only significantly related to ADHD symptoms for a subset of negative emotion-strategy combinations. Conclusions: ADHD symptoms are associated with emotion regulation strategy use in the course of daily life. By implication, training strategy use, especially reducing rumination, could be a potentially valuable intervention target to reduce emotional difficulties associated with ADHD symptoms and their downstream impacts.