ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychopathology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1678275
This article is part of the Research TopicGlobal Youth Mental Health Crisis: Understanding Challenges and Advancing Solutions in PsychopathologyView all 7 articles
Impact of expressive suppression on subthreshold depression among college students: a moderated mediation model
Provisionally accepted
- 1school of nursing, Jiangxi medical college, Jiangxi Province, China
- 2Guizhou Medical University, Guiyang, China
- 3Shangrao Normal University, Shangrao, China
- 4Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, China
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Emotion regulation strategies, particularly expressive suppression, and negative attention bias significantly contribute to the onset and persistence of subthreshold depression among college students. However, the underlying moderating mechanisms of this relationship remain inadequately understood. Guided by the Emotion Regulation Process Model, this study examined a moderated mediation model to determine whether negative attention bias mediates the relationship between expressive suppression and subthreshold depression and to explore the moderating role of regulatory emotional self-efficacy within this framework. A total of 956 college students aged between 19 and 24 years participated in this cross-sectional survey. Results revealed that negative attention bias fully mediated the relationship between expressive suppression and subthreshold depression. Moreover, regulatory emotional self-efficacy moderated both the direct relationship between expressive suppression and subthreshold depression, and the association between negative attention bias and subthreshold depression. Specifically, individuals with higher levels of regulatory emotional self-efficacy exhibited diminished indirect effects of expressive suppression on subthreshold depression through negative attention bias. These findings provide valuable insights into potential mechanisms for targeted interventions and preventative measures aimed at reducing depressive symptoms among college students.
Keywords: subthreshold depression1, expressive suppression2, regulatory emotional self- efficacy3, negative attention bias4, College students5
Received: 02 Aug 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Huang, Qin, Li, Zhang, Ma and Song. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lieyu Huang, hly21st@gmc.edu.cn
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