Abstract

FORTES, Amanda Borges; MAIA, Cintia Pacheco  and  KRISTENSEN, Christian Haag. Cognitive strategies of emotional regulation: association with post-traumatic symptoms. Psic., Saúde & Doenças [online]. 2018, vol.19, n.3, pp.605-616. ISSN 1645-0086.  https://doi.org/10.15309/18psd190311.

There are a vast variety of emotional responses that is prejudicial to the quality of life in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Therefore, it is very important to understand the importance of scarcity on the literature in this matter. The present study aims to compare the use of cognitive emotion strategies between populations with high and low PTSD symptoms. The sample consisted in 38 participants, who were divided in two groups according to the degree of PTSD symptomatology. The instruments used were the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist (PCL-5) to evaluate the symptom’s level of PTSD and the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) to track the cognitive emotion strategies. As results, it was found that there is statistically significant differences between the groups, since the group with high symptomatology makes more use of maladaptive strategies (p<0.001): auto-blame (p<0.004), rumination (p<0.001); and guilting others (p<0.005). About the adaptive strategies, there was only one specific strategy that appeared statistically significant difference, which was Positive Focalization (p<0.044). Thus, the present study confirms the idea proposed in the literature, showing that the maladaptive strategies of emotional regulation are associated with high symptoms for PTSD.

Keywords : cognitive emotional regulation; strategies of emotional regulation; PTSD.

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