Effectiveness of psychological interventions to improve emotion regulation in youth - a meta-analysis

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Moltrecht ◽  
Jessica Deighton ◽  
Praveetha Patalay ◽  
Julian Childs

Background: Research investigating the role of emotion regulation (ER) in the development and treatment of psychopathology has increased in recent years. Evidence suggests that an increased focus on ER in treatment can improve existing interventions. Most ER research has neglected young people, therefore the present meta-analysis summarizes the evidence for existing psychosocial intervention and their effectiveness to improve ER in youth. Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted according to the PRISMA guidelines. Twenty-one randomized-control-trials (RCTs) assessed changes in ER following a psychological intervention in youth exhibiting various psychopathological symptoms.Results: We found moderate effect sizes for current interventions to decrease emotion dysregulation in youth (g=-.46) and small effect sizes to improve emotion regulation (g=0.36). Significant differences between studies including intervention components, ER measures and populations studied resulted in large heterogeneity. Conclusion: This is the first meta-analysis that summarizes the effectiveness for existing interventions to improve ER in youth. The results suggest that interventions can enhance ER in youth, and that these improvements correlate with improvements in psychopathology. More RCTs including larger sample sizes, different age groups and psychopathologies are needed to increase our understanding of what works for who and when.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenni Leppanen ◽  
Dalia Brown ◽  
Hannah McLinden ◽  
Kate Tchanturia ◽  
Steven Williams

Background: Previous theoretical models and reviews have documented a strong connection between emotion dysregulation eating disorder (ED) psychopathology among the general and clinical populations. The aim of this review was to build on this previous work by conducting a network meta-analysis to explore associations between specific emotion regulation strategies and ED psychopathology trans-diagnostically across the ED spectrum to identify areas of emotion dysregulation that have the strongest association with symptomatology.Methodology: A total of 105 studies were included in the meta-analysis and correlation coefficient representing the associations between specific emotion regulation strategies and ED symptomatology were extracted. We ran a Bayesian random effects network meta-analysis and the initial network was well connected with each emotion regulation strategy being linked to at least one other strategy. We also conducted a network meta-regression to explore whether between-study differences in body mass index (BMI), age, and whether the sample consisted of solely female participants explained any possible network inconsistency. Results: The network meta-analysis revealed that ruminations and non-acceptance of emotions were most closely associated with ED psychopathology. There was no significant network inconsistency but two comparisons approached significance and thus meta-regressions were conducted. The meta-regressions revealed a significant effect of BMI such that the associations between different emotion regulation strategies and ED symptomatology were weaker among those with low BMI. Discussion: The present findings build on previous work and highlight the role of rumination and difficulties with accepting emotions as key emotion regulation difficulties in EDs. Additionally, the finding that the associations were weaker among ED patients with low BMI may point towards a complex relationship between ED behaviours and emotion regulation. Taken together, our findings call for interventions that target emotion regulation, specifically rumination and difficulties accepting emotions, in the treatment of EDs.


2021 ◽  
pp. 088626052110063
Author(s):  
Lauren E. Simpson ◽  
Alexa M. Raudales ◽  
Miranda E. Reyes ◽  
Tami P. Sullivan ◽  
Nicole H. Weiss

Women who experience intimate partner violence (IPV) are at heightened risk for developing posttraumatic stress (PTS). Emotion dysregulation has been linked to both IPV and PTS, separately, however, unknown is the role of emotion dysregulation in the relation of IPV to PTS among women who experience IPV. Moreover, existing investigations in this area have been limited in their focus on negative emotion dysregulation. Extending prior research, this study investigated whether physical, sexual, and psychological IPV were indirectly associated with PTS symptom severity through negative and positive emotion dysregulation. Participants were 354 women who reported a history of IPV recruited from Amazon’s MTurk platform ( Mage = 36.52, 79.9% white). Participants completed self-report measures assessing physical (Conflict Tactics Scale), sexual (Sexual Experiences Scale), and psychological (Psychological Maltreatment of Women) IPV; negative (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale) and positive (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-Positive) emotion dysregulation; and PTS symptom severity (PTSD Checklist for DSM-5) via an online survey. Pearson’s correlation coefficients examined intercorrelations among the primary study variables. Indirect effect analyses were conducted to determine if negative and positive emotion dysregulation explained the relations between physical, sexual, and psychological IPV and PTS symptom severity. Physical, sexual, and psychological IPV were significantly positively associated with both negative and positive emotion dysregulation as well as PTS symptom severity, with the exception that psychological IPV was not significantly associated with positive emotion dysregulation. Moreover, negative and positive emotion dysregulation accounted for the relationships between all three IPV types and PTS symptom severity, with the exception of positive emotion dysregulation and psychological IPV. Our findings provide support for the potential underlying role of both negative and positive emotion dysregulation in the associations of IPV types to PTS symptom severity. Negative and positive emotion dysregulation may be important factors to integrate into interventions for PTS among women who experience IPV.


Author(s):  
Kalin Z. Salinas ◽  
Amanda Venta

The current study proposed to determine whether adolescent emotion regulation is predictive of the amount and type of crime committed by adolescent juvenile offenders. Despite evidence in the literature linking emotion regulation to behaviour problems and aggression across the lifespan, there is no prior longitudinal research examining the predictive role of emotion regulation on adolescent recidivism, nor data regarding how emotion regulation relates to the occurrence of specific types of crimes. Our primary hypothesis was that poor emotion regulation would positively and significantly predict re-offending among adolescents. We tested our hypothesis within a binary logistic framework utilizing the Pathways to Desistance longitudinal data. Exploratory bivariate analyses were conducted regarding emotion regulation and type of crime in the service of future hypothesis generation. Though the findings did not indicate a statistically significant relation between emotion regulation and reoffending, exploratory findings suggest that some types of crime may be more linked to emotion regulation than others. In sum, the present study aimed to examine a hypothesized relation between emotion regulation and juvenile delinquency by identifying how the individual factor of dysregulated emotion regulation may have played a role. This study’s findings did not provide evidence that emotion regulation was a significant predictor of recidivism over time but did suggest that emotion regulation is related to participation in certain types of crime one year later. Directions for future research that build upon the current study were described. Indeed, identifying emotion regulation as a predictor of adolescent crime has the potential to enhance current crime prevention efforts and clinical treatments for juvenile offenders; this is based on the large amount of treatment literature, which documents that emotion regulation is malleable through treatment and prevention programming.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 107602962110029
Author(s):  
Mira Merashli ◽  
Alessia Arcaro ◽  
Maria Graf ◽  
Matilde Caruso ◽  
Paul R. J. Ames ◽  
...  

The relationship between antiphospholipid antibodies (aPL) and sickle cell disease (SCD) has never been systematically addressed. Our aim was to evaluate potential links between SCD and aPL in all age groups. EMBASE/PubMed was screened from inception to May 2020 and Peto odds ratios for rare events were calculated. The pooled prevalence (PP) of IgG anticardiolipin antibodies (aCL) was higher in individuals with SCD than in controls (27.9% vs 8.7%, P < 0.0001), that of IgM aCL was similar in the two groups (2.9% vs 2.7%); only individuals with SCD were positive for lupus anticoagulant (LA) (7.7% vs 0%, P < 0.0001). The PP of leg ulcers was similar between aPL positive and negative individuals (44% vs 53%) and between patients in acute crisis and stable patients (5.6% vs 7.3%). Reporting of aPL as a binary outcome and not as a titer precluded further interpretation. The results indicate that a prospective case-control study with serial measurements of a panel of aPL in SCD patients might be warranted, in order to understand further the possible pathogenic role of aPL in SCD.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rebecca Olsen

<p>Delay discounting refers to the fact that rewards lose their value if they are delayed. Excessive delay discounting is associated with various health-related problems such as over-eating and substance abuse. One phenomenon shown to reduce delay discounting is Episodic Future Thinking (EFT; imagining personal future events). Across multiple experiments and a meta-analysis, the current thesis examined the reliability of the effect of EFT on delay discounting and also sought to clarify the components of EFT that are necessary to reduce delay discounting.  Experiment 1 replicated the EFT effect using a common titrating-amount procedure, and the meta-analysis based on 40 independent studies confirmed that EFT has a reliable, medium-sized effect on delay discounting. The meta-analysis also assessed the robustness of the EFT effect across various methodological features and participant characteristics. A multiple meta-regression revealed that the between-study variability in the size of the EFT effect was accounted for by study design and type of discounting measure. Within-subjects design studies had significantly smaller effect sizes than between-subjects design studies. Studies that used k as a discounting rate measure had significantly smaller effect sizes than studies that used area under the discounting curve or other atheoretical discounting measures. The size of the EFT effect was robust across different participant characteristics and ages, suggesting that EFT may be utilized as an effective intervention for a variety of age groups and impulsive behaviors.  Experiments 2A, 2B and 2C assessed the suitability of an alternative and briefer delay discounting procedure (in which participants simply report their indifference points) for subsequent EFT experiments. The report indifference points procedure produced a high percentage of invalid data, a finding that was replicated across all three experiments. We therefore continued to use the well-established titrating-amount procedure in subsequent studies.  Experiment 3A found that episodic past thinking (imagining personal past events) and semantic future thinking (estimating what a person could buy with the larger, delayed amount) had no effect on discounting, indicating that both episodic thinking and future thinking are necessary components of the EFT effect. Experiment 3A results also indicated that financial relevance alone is not sufficient to reducing discounting. Experiment 3B found that the future events also need to be personally relevant to reduce discounting, and that participants perceived EFT to reduce their discounting by primarily making the larger, delayed reward more valuable. We also showed that demand characteristics, where participants change their behavior to conform to the researcher’s expectations, are an unlikely explanation for the EFT effects found in Experiments 3A and 3B. Further research is warranted to form a better understanding of the mechanism(s) through which EFT reduces delay discounting.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rebecca Olsen

<p>Delay discounting refers to the fact that rewards lose their value if they are delayed. Excessive delay discounting is associated with various health-related problems such as over-eating and substance abuse. One phenomenon shown to reduce delay discounting is Episodic Future Thinking (EFT; imagining personal future events). Across multiple experiments and a meta-analysis, the current thesis examined the reliability of the effect of EFT on delay discounting and also sought to clarify the components of EFT that are necessary to reduce delay discounting.  Experiment 1 replicated the EFT effect using a common titrating-amount procedure, and the meta-analysis based on 40 independent studies confirmed that EFT has a reliable, medium-sized effect on delay discounting. The meta-analysis also assessed the robustness of the EFT effect across various methodological features and participant characteristics. A multiple meta-regression revealed that the between-study variability in the size of the EFT effect was accounted for by study design and type of discounting measure. Within-subjects design studies had significantly smaller effect sizes than between-subjects design studies. Studies that used k as a discounting rate measure had significantly smaller effect sizes than studies that used area under the discounting curve or other atheoretical discounting measures. The size of the EFT effect was robust across different participant characteristics and ages, suggesting that EFT may be utilized as an effective intervention for a variety of age groups and impulsive behaviors.  Experiments 2A, 2B and 2C assessed the suitability of an alternative and briefer delay discounting procedure (in which participants simply report their indifference points) for subsequent EFT experiments. The report indifference points procedure produced a high percentage of invalid data, a finding that was replicated across all three experiments. We therefore continued to use the well-established titrating-amount procedure in subsequent studies.  Experiment 3A found that episodic past thinking (imagining personal past events) and semantic future thinking (estimating what a person could buy with the larger, delayed amount) had no effect on discounting, indicating that both episodic thinking and future thinking are necessary components of the EFT effect. Experiment 3A results also indicated that financial relevance alone is not sufficient to reducing discounting. Experiment 3B found that the future events also need to be personally relevant to reduce discounting, and that participants perceived EFT to reduce their discounting by primarily making the larger, delayed reward more valuable. We also showed that demand characteristics, where participants change their behavior to conform to the researcher’s expectations, are an unlikely explanation for the EFT effects found in Experiments 3A and 3B. Further research is warranted to form a better understanding of the mechanism(s) through which EFT reduces delay discounting.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. S394-S394
Author(s):  
G. Rogier ◽  
P. Velotti

IntroductionTheories have conceptualized pathological gambling as an attempt to cope with emotional states. However, there is a lack of research about emotion dysregulation in this population. In a similar way, few is known about the nature of emotion regulation strategies used by pathological gamblers. Furthermore, it is not clear if pathological gamblers have difficulties to regulate negative emotions (as sadness) or positive ones (as excitement).ObjectivesWe sought to explore the associations among pathological gambling, emotion dysregulation and different types of emotion regulation strategies, comparing a clinical sample with community participants.AimsTo highlight similarities and differences in emotion dysregulation between pathological gamblers and healthy participants.MethodsA sample of pathological gamblers and a sample of healthy men, were administered the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS), Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), Difficulties in Emotion regulation Scale-Positive (DERS-P), Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) and the Ways of Savoring Checklist (WOSC).ResultsAs expected, both levels of emotion dysregulation and suppression were significantly higher in the clinical sample while levels of savoring and reappraisal were significantly higher in the community sample.ConclusionsSuch results confirm the theorization of pathological gambling as a dysfunctional response to emotional states and underline the role of positive emotions. Specifically, pathological gamblers may be prone to suppress negative emotions instead to engage in functional strategies as reappraisal. Gamblers also fail to regulate positive emotions showing a poor capacity of savoring positive moments.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 444-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Paul Lefebvre ◽  
Tobias Krettenauer

This meta-analysis examined the relationship between moral identity and moral emotions drawing on 57 independent studies. Moral identity was significantly associated with moral emotions, r = .32, p < .01, 95% confidence interval [CI: .27, .36]. Effect sizes were moderated by the type of moral emotion. Studies reporting other-regarding emotions (sympathy, empathy, and compassion) had the largest effect sizes ( r = .41), while negative other-evaluative emotions (moral anger, contempt, and disgust) had the smallest ( r = .16). Self-evaluative and other-evaluative positive emotions had intermediate effect sizes ( r values between .29 and .32). The type of emotion measure also was a significant moderator, with trait measures of emotion ( r = .38) correlating more strongly with moral identity than state measures ( r = .24). Effect sizes did not differ for the type of moral identity measure being used, publication status, or cultural origin of the study sample. The results of this meta-analysis demonstrate a robust empirical connection between moral identity and moral emotions, which confirms the multifaceted role of moral identity in moral functioning.


Author(s):  
Patricia K. Kerig

This chapter describes theoretical models and empirical research devoted to understanding the aftermath of childhood trauma exposure and discusses the value of considering posttraumatic stress from an emotion dysregulation perspective. After describing definitional controversies in the field related to both trauma and posttraumatic stress, this chapter summarizes research on the effects of chronic, prolonged, and repeated traumatic experiences in childhood, such as maltreatment, with particular attention to its potential to compromise development of adaptive emotion regulation capacities. The role of emotion dysregulation in leading theoretical models of posttraumatic stress is presented, as well as empirical research testing the hypothesis that emotion dysregulation represents an underlying developmental mechanism through which childhood trauma affects functioning over the lifespan. Future directions include a need for clarification in conceptualization and measurement, further developmental processes to be considered, and opportunities for translational work to inform intervention efforts.


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