Comparing Emotion Regulation Strategies and Emotional Self-Regulation in 12-16 Year Old Boys with and without Drug-Addicted Parents in Masjed Soleyman

The present study was undertaken to compare emotion regulation strategies and emotional self-regulation in 12-16 year old boys with and without drug-addicted parents in Masjed Soleyman. This survey research had a casual-comparative design. The population of the study comprised all students aged 12 to 16 with and without drug-addicted parents in Masjed Soleyman who were studying in junior high schools in academic year 2016-2017. From among the statistical population, 30 students with drug-addicted parents were selected by convenience sampling method and 30 students with healthy parents were selected via simple random sampling method. The instruments included Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski et al., 2001) and Measure of Affect Regulation Styles (MARS). The obtained data were analyzed through multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). The results demonstrated that there was a significant difference between students with and without drug-addicted parents with regard to emotion regulation strategies and emotional self-regulation (P≤0.05). More specifically, students with addicted parents showed lower levels of emotion regulation strategies and emotional self-regulation than their regular counterparts. The findings of this study indicated that drug-addicted parents can expose their children especially boys to psychological problems such as emotional dysregulation.