Research Interests
Depression and anxiety are leading causes of disability globally. Their high rate of co-occurrence suggests they may have common causes and risk factors, but these causes and risk factors are not fully understood. Additionally, some, but not all, individuals with these debilitating internalizing disorders also experience other serious mental illnesses such as bipolar disorders and externalizing disorders (e.g., substance use disorders). However, what contributes to these different patterns of comorbidity remains unclear. Together, delineating crucial processes underlying depression, anxiety, and other related disorders, and elucidating when and how these processes give rise to different patterns of co-occurring disorders will greatly help to refine current interventions and develop more effective treatment approaches.
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The overarching goal of my research is to identify cognitive-affective processes that confer risk for the development and maintenance of depression, anxiety, and co-occurring problems (e.g., substance use, mania). In particular, my research focuses on variations in the ways individuals approach and respond to motivationally salient internal and external stimuli such as emotions, reward, and threat. Recognizing that these processes do not take place or function in a vacuum, I have also been interested in contextual factors (e.g., stress, family environment) that can shape, alter, and/or interact with these cognitive-affective processes. To capture these crucial processes and contextual factors precisely and comprehensively, my work has involved clinical and non-clinical samples, multiple methodologies (e.g., experience sampling, clinical interviews, neural, behavioral, self-report), advanced quantitative modeling (e.g., multilevel structural equation modeling [MSEM], mixture modeling [latent class/profile analysis]), and meta-analytic approaches. In addition, consistent with the aims of open science, I have made data sets associated with my recent work publicly available, along with syntaxes and lists of measures used.
How does emotion regulation contribute to depression, anxiety, and co-occurring problems?
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One major contribution of my research has been identifying aberrations in the way we monitor and modify our own emotions (i.e., emotion regulation) and associations of disrupted emotion regulation with depression and anxiety. Specifically, I have focused on dispositional abilities that contribute to adaptive ER (i.e., ER abilities) as well as cognitive-behavioral strategies individuals use to influence their emotions (i.e., ER strategies) (Naragon-Gainey, McMahon & Park, 2018). For example, I have found that reduced ability to clearly identify one’s emotions may
increase risk for psychological symptoms following traumatic experiences (Park et al., 2015), whereas clear identification of one’s emotions is linked to more successful modification of the emotions, which, in turn, leads to decreased depression and anxiety (Park & Naragon-Gainey, 2019). However, it should be noted that the adaptive value of this ER ability may depend on broad personality dimensions such as neuroticism (Park & Naragon-Gainey, 2020). It is also important to recognize similarities and differences between the ability to identify emotions and similar constructs (e.g., emotional awareness, emotion differentiation: Park, Zhan, & Naragon-Gainey, 2022), to delineate the role of identification more precisely. Further, multiple ER abilities should be considered simultaneously because they can function together as an interactive unit to contribute to other aspects of ER (e.g., strategies, goals) and depression, anxiety, as well as mania (Park & Naragon-Gainey, 2024).
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Moving forward, I will continue to elucidate how variations in positive and negative ER confer risk for depression, anxiety, and other serious co-occurring mental illness (e.g., mania, substance use). In particular, I plan to examine whether and how deficits in positive and negative ER are commonly and uniquely associated with these disorders. As an initial attempt, I have examined whether distinct patterns of ER strategies and emotion-related impulsivity (e.g., positive and negative urgency) are differentially associated with depression, cyclothymic temperament (a risk factor for bipolar disorders), and alcohol use among a large non-clinical sample (Park, Meyer, & Vujanovic, in prep). I also plan to expand my research to delineate what contributes to or interferes with the emergence and refinement of ER abilities across development using longitudinal study designs. I am particularly interested in the role of neural responses to emotional stimuli (e.g., late positive potential [LPP]; Weinberg & Park, 2023), early life adversity, and stress, in the emergence of ER abilities. In line with this, I have tested the cumulative and interactive impact of several types of early life stress (e.g., childhood maltreatment, negative parenting style) in the context of COVID-19 stress among adults (Park, Freeman, Hong, & Weinberg, in prep).
How are reward sensitivity and threat sensitivity associated with depression, anxiety, and co-occurring problems?
I am also interested in cognitive-affective processes involved in responding to motivationally-salient stimuli (e.g., reward, threat). I am particularly interested in how aberrations in reward and threat sensitivity confer risk for multiple forms of psychopathology as well as their co-occurrence, and whether reward and threat sensitivity are associated with psychopathology via emotion regulation. For example, I examined associations that neural sensitivity to reward and threat show with multiple forms of psychopathology (including depression and anxiety) using the HiTOP framework, a dimensional classification model of psychopathology (Park, Panier, Hajcak, Kotov, & Weinberg, in prep).
Photo by Moe Magners
In another project, I also identified latent profiles of reward sensitivity using neural and self-report measures across different types of reward (e.g., monetary reward, food reward, social approval, appetitive images) to better identify individuals who may be more prone to depression and other important clinical outcomes (e.g., disrupted social functioning, risk-taking tendency: Park, Banica, & Weinberg, 2023). Moving forward, I will further elucidate whether and how aberrations in reward and threat processing are associated with distinct patterns of comorbidity (e.g., differentiating individuals with internalizing disorders from individuals with both internalizing and externalizing disorders). Moreover, I plan to elucidate mechanisms through which
Photo by Tijana Drndarski
aberrations in reward and threat sensitivity confer risk for depression, anxiety, and co-occurring problems. I am particularly interested in examining whether aberrations in reward/threat sensitivity contribute to these disorders by giving rise to or interacting with deficits in ER in daily life, using experience sampling methods and other methods (e.g., neural measures, self-reports, behavioral measures). In line with this, I am currently working on a large longitudinal project I have proposed at McGill to examine whether aberrations in neural sensitivity to reward predict depressive symptoms via ER strategies used in response to positive emotions in daily life, especially under stress exposure.