Moderating Role of Emotion Dysregulation between Psychological Distress and Suicidal Ideation among Substance Users

Abstract

The current study aims to investigate the moderating role of difficulty in emotion regulation between psychological distress
(depression, anxiety, and stress) and suicidal ideation among substance users. The study also focused to find out the difference of
emotion dysregulation, suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, and stress between substance users and non-users. In this study the
cross sectional and correlational research design was used and the data was collected from different public and private hospitals
and rehabilitation centers of Lahore city Pakistan on 10th/March/ 2018 to 28th/August/2018 from (N=120) participants, (N=60,
50%) were substance users (N= 60, 50%) were non-users. The difficulty emotional regulation scale (DERS), suicidal ideation
attributes scale (SIAS), and depressions, anxiety, stress (DASS) scale were used in Urdu language to obtain the data from
participants. Results of the current study showed that emotional instability is positively increasing the correlation between
psychological distress and suicidal ideation in substance users. The significant positive was also found in emotion dysregulation,
suicidal ideation and psychological distress among substance users and non-users.
The study concluded that emotion dysregulation as a key factor which increases the chances toward substance use and triggers
multiple psychological problems like depression, anxiety, and stress. The study further found that the substance users have more
psychological issues like depression, anxiety and stress as compared to non- users because of emotional un-stability.