Psychiatric symptoms and emotion regulation strategies among the unemployed people in Korea: A latent profile analysis

This study aimed to explore the profiles of emotion regulation strategies among unemployed people, and to examine the association of latent profiles with demographics and psychiatric symptoms. The study included 136 men (42.8%) and 182 women (57.2%). The average age of the participants was 35.84 years (SD = 26.83). Latent profile analysis was used to determine emotion regulation strategy profiles. Associated factors of profile membership were identified with multinomial logistic regression. The four-profile model (low adaptive emotion regulation class, low negative emotion regulation/moderate positive regulation class, high negative emotion regulation/support-seeking class, adaptive emotion regulation class) was selected as the best solution. As a result of examining the probability of being classified into each class according to emotional difficulties, the lower the level of anxiety and somatization, the higher the probability of belonging to the class 2 adaptive emotion regulation class (n = 56, 18%). The higher the depression, the higher the probability of being classified into class 4 (n = 65, 20%) using a lot of negative emotion regulation strategies. The results of this study indicate that unemployed people can be classified into various subgroups according to their emotion regulation strategies. Also, the probability of being classified into each subgroup was different based on the types of emotional difficulties such as depression, anxiety, and somatization. Through the results of this study, it is possible to understand the relationship between the psychiatric symptoms of unemployed people and emotion regulation strategies and to suggest methods for promoting effective emotion regulation strategies among this population group.