TY - JOUR
T1 - Emotion regulation as a transdiagnostic treatment construct across anxiety, depression, substance, eating and borderline personality disorders
T2 - A systematic review
AU - Sloan, Elise
AU - Hall, Kate
AU - Moulding, Richard
AU - Bryce, Shayden
AU - Mildred, Helen
AU - Staiger, Petra K.
PY - 2017/11/1
Y1 - 2017/11/1
N2 - A large body of research has implicated difficulties in emotion regulation as central to the development and maintenance of psychopathology. Emotion regulation has therefore been proposed as a transdiagnostic construct or an underlying mechanism in psychopathology. The transdiagnostic role of emotion regulation has yet to be systematically examined within the psychological treatment outcome literature. It can be proposed that if emotion regulation is indeed a transdiagnostic construct central to the maintenance of psychopathology, then changes in emotion regulation difficulties will occur after effective treatment and this will occur for different disorders. We conducted a systematic review, identifying 67 studies that measured changes in both emotion regulation and symptoms of psychopathology following a psychological intervention for anxiety, depression, substance use, eating pathology or borderline personality disorder. Results demonstrated that regardless of the intervention or disorder, both maladaptive emotion regulation strategy use and overall emotion dysregulation were found to significantly decrease following treatment in all but two studies. Parallel decreases were also found in symptoms of anxiety, depression, substance use, eating pathology and borderline personality disorder. These results contribute to the growing body of evidence supporting the conceptualization of emotion regulation as a transdiagnostic construct. The present study discusses the important implications of these findings for the development of unified treatments that target emotion regulation for individuals who present with multiple disorders.
AB - A large body of research has implicated difficulties in emotion regulation as central to the development and maintenance of psychopathology. Emotion regulation has therefore been proposed as a transdiagnostic construct or an underlying mechanism in psychopathology. The transdiagnostic role of emotion regulation has yet to be systematically examined within the psychological treatment outcome literature. It can be proposed that if emotion regulation is indeed a transdiagnostic construct central to the maintenance of psychopathology, then changes in emotion regulation difficulties will occur after effective treatment and this will occur for different disorders. We conducted a systematic review, identifying 67 studies that measured changes in both emotion regulation and symptoms of psychopathology following a psychological intervention for anxiety, depression, substance use, eating pathology or borderline personality disorder. Results demonstrated that regardless of the intervention or disorder, both maladaptive emotion regulation strategy use and overall emotion dysregulation were found to significantly decrease following treatment in all but two studies. Parallel decreases were also found in symptoms of anxiety, depression, substance use, eating pathology and borderline personality disorder. These results contribute to the growing body of evidence supporting the conceptualization of emotion regulation as a transdiagnostic construct. The present study discusses the important implications of these findings for the development of unified treatments that target emotion regulation for individuals who present with multiple disorders.
KW - Emotion dysregulation
KW - Emotion regulation
KW - Psychopathology
KW - Transdiagnostic
KW - Treatment
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85029586379&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cpr.2017.09.002
DO - 10.1016/j.cpr.2017.09.002
M3 - Review Article
C2 - 28941927
AN - SCOPUS:85029586379
SN - 0272-7358
VL - 57
SP - 141
EP - 163
JO - Clinical Psychology Review
JF - Clinical Psychology Review
ER -
