Previous studies reported that mental health and emotion regulation strategies deteriorated in the refugee sample. The main goal of the study was to analyze the mediation effect of emotion regulation strategies as expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal between resilience to helplessness – depression and flourishing. The second aim was to determine to what extent emotion regulation strategies and resilience to helplessness-depression predicted flourishing. Forty-seven Syrian refugees, aged 18-64, who were settled in Istanbul fulfilled the coping competence questionnaire (CCQ), the flourishing scale, and the emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ). The serial mediation analysis indicated that expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal had a significant indirect mediating effect between resilience to helplessness-depression and flourishing. Multiple regression analysis showed that expressive suppression was a negative predictor of flourishing. However, both cognitive reappraisal and resilience to helplessness – depression were positive predictors of flourishing. Moreover, ERQ, flourishing, and CCQ scales showed good internal reliability consistency scores in the refugee group. The study suggested that improvement in emotion regulation strategies may be a helpful strategy in the therapeutic setting.

The aim of our study was to verify relationships between individual difficulties in emotion regulation (ER), ER strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression), and compassion (to self and others) with the presence of depressive symptomatology in a sample of Slovak adolescents during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the sample of 140 Slovak adolescents (age between 17–19 years) was administrated The Beck Depression Inventory- II. (Beck et al., 1996), The Overall Depression Severity and Impairment Scale (Bentley et al., 2014), The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003), The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz & Roemer, 2004), The Sussex-Oxford Compassion for the Self Scale and The Sussex-Oxford Compassion for Others Scale (Gu et al., 2019). Results revealed that difficulties in ER (all subscales) and expressive suppression were in positive relationships with depression symptoms. Cognitive reappraisal and self-compassion were in negative relationships with depression symptoms. Lack of ER strategies and cognitive reappraisal (inversely) were the strongest predictors of depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that ER strategies (mainly cognitive reappraisal) could be assumed as protective factors in adolescent depression symptoms development in stressful circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic.