Intolerance of Uncertainty and Depressive Symptoms in Female Freshmen: The Mediating Role of Cognitive and Behavioral Emotion-Regulation Strategies

Depression among university freshmen has become a serious public health problem; however, the underlying psychological factors and mechanisms remain insufficiently understood in this population. Intolerance of uncertainty (IU) has been considered a strong transdiagnostic risk factor for depression, yet few studies have investigated the pathways through which IU contributes to depressive symptoms in university freshmen. The present study explored whether adaptive and maladaptive cognitive and behavioral emotion regulation strategies mediate the relationship between global and dimensional IU (Prospective Anxiety and Inhibitory Anxiety) and depressive symptoms. A sample of 600 female Romanian freshmen completed self-report measures of IU, cognitive and behavioral emotion regulation strategies, and depressive symptomatology. Hypotheses were tested using PROCESS v5.0, model 4 (Hayes et al., 2025). Our results indicate that only maladaptive cognitive ER strategies mediated the relationship between IUS-Prospective Anxiety and depressive symptoms. In contrast, both deficits in adaptive regulation and increases in maladaptive regulation processes partially mediate the relationship between IUS-Inhibitory Anxiety and global IU and depressive symptoms. Thus, from a clinical point of view, early screening for global and dimensional IU and (mal)adaptive emotion regulation strategies in mental health programs targeting freshmen may help identify students with elevated risk of depression.