The role of cognitive emotion regulation strategies in explaining insomnia symptoms in adolescence and early adulthood

introduction: cognitive emotion regulation (CER) may be defined as the cognitive way of managing emotional information and refers to the mental side of the emotion regulation process. the association between maladaptive CER strategies and psychopathological symptoms is widely documented. however, the link with insomnia has been less thorough, and there is even less evidence about the difference in these relationships between young adults and adolescents. In this regard, neurological changes that occur during adolescence might shape the use of more advanced cognitive and emotional abilities with consistent differences in the use of specific CER strategies. to address these gaps, we present the results of two studies to examine the unique predictive power of each cognitive ER strategy on insomnia in two samples of adolescents and young adults. materials and methods: a convenience sample of 431 young adults aged 18-28 years (mage = 20.66, SD = 2.21) was recruited among the student community of sapienza university of rome. on the other hand, a total of 271 adolescents, aged 13-17 years (mage = 14.80, SD = 0.59, 55.4% males) were enrolled from two high schools in rome. the cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire (CERQ) and the insomnia severity Index (ISI) were administered to assess CER strategies and insomnia symptoms. nine CER strategies were evaluated: putting into perspective, acceptance, positive refocusing, positive reappraisal, refocus on planning, rumination, catastrophizing, self-blame and other-blame. after a series of assumptions check, two hierarchical linear regression models were implemented to assess the impact of CER on insomnia in both samples. gender was forced into the equation in the first step as control variables, while the major set of CER entered in the second step. results: the final model accounted for approximately 15% of the variance of insomnia symptoms among young adults. specifically, after controlling for the effect of gender, catastrophizing (β = .130; p<.05), self-blame (β = .181; p<.001), and putting into perspective (β = -.109; p<.05) significantly predicted insomnia. on the other hand, the regression model explained approximately 29% of the variance of insomnia in adolescents. after accounting for gender, rumination (β = .236, p<0.001) and catastrophizing (β = .195, p<0.01) were significant predictor of insomnia symptoms. conclusions: these findings corroborate the role of maladaptive CER strategies as potential contributors of sleep quality impairment, as well as the benefit of incorporating emotion regulation training in insomnia intervention programs. we highlight that, differently from what was found in adolescents, adaptive CER strategies (i.e., putting into perspective) may be relevant in preventing adults’ insomnia. Results are consistent with research on the refinement of emotion regulation repertoire across the lifespan, suggesting a general trend to increase adaptive CER strategies. future longitudinal studies are needed to infer the direction of the relationship of the use of emotion regulation strategies with insomnia symptoms and investigate whether the contribution of CER strategies changes depending on age-specific biological, social, or environmental resources.