To explore the associations between early adverse stress, attachment insecurity in adulthood (anxious and avoidant), pathological personality styles (self-criticism and dependency), difficulties in emotion regulation, and depression severity.

Cross-sectional study of 178 outpatients diagnosed with major depression in Santiago, Chile. Participants filled the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire Short Form, the Experience in Close Relationships Scale, the Depressive Experience Questionnaire, the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 item. Full-information maximum likelihood path analyses with bias-corrected bootstrapped confidence intervals were conducted.

Anxious attachment in adulthood and self-criticism mediated the association between early adverse stress and depression severity through their effects on difficulties in emotion regulation. Early adverse stress was not associated with avoidant attachment in adulthood and dependency; these variables were indirectly associated with depression severity. Difficulties in emotion regulation were exclusively directly related to depression severity, mediating the effects of the preceding variables.

Our findings propose an integrative model for psychological mechanisms mediating between early adverse stress and depression. Difficulties in emotion regulation should be considered when treating adults with depression exposed to early adverse stress. The contribution of specific types of early adverse stressors and difficulties in emotion regulation should be further explored.

This study examined the effects of compassion-based intervention on mental health in cancer patients by using systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

Eleven bibliographic databases were searched from their earliest data available date up to March 1, 2022. The databases were PubMed, CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, WOS, Cochrane, Embase, Scopus, ProQuest Dissertations, Airiti Library, and the National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan.

Ten studies from 2015 to 2021 were included with a total of 771 cancer patients. Most were targeted at women with breast cancer. Brief compassion-based interventions of approximately 30 minutes were conducted by audio file, paper, and web-based self-guided writing prompts. Most were conducted after the completion of active treatment. Anxiety was the most measured outcome. Constructive compassion-based interventions with 4- to 12-week sessions were conducted by a trained facilitator. Most were conducted for patients who had undergone treatment, and depression was the most measured outcome. The meta-analysis indicated that compassion-based interventions had a significant effect of reducing depression and increasing self-compassion. Moderation analysis indicated that constructive intervention showed more benefits of increased self-compassion than brief intervention. Both face-to-face and non-face-to-face web-delivered formats had benefits for increasing self-compassion compared with the control condition.

Compassion-based interventions might provide an effective strategy for improving self-compassion and depression among patients with breast cancer. Suggestions for further research and health-care providers follow.

The role of sensitivity to punishment on aggression is controversial, both positive and negative relationships have been observed in previous literature.

The aim of this research was to clarify the role of sensitivity to punishment in different types of aggression and provide a better understanding of the influence of emotional regulation on this relationship.

Two hundred and twenty-nine participants took part in the study (130 women; average age = 21.52 years). All of them were assessed for levels of verbal aggression, physical aggression, anger, and hostility (by Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire), levels of sensitivity to punishment (by SPSRQ–20), and emotional regulation ability (by MSCEIT).

A higher reactivity to punishment had a direct negative effect on physical and verbal aggression. However, a higher reactivity to punishment also showed a positive indirect effect on verbal and physical aggression through an increase in anger and hostility. In addition, ability in regulating emotions moderated the indirect effects of sensitivity to punishment on physical aggression.

Our results suggest that sensitivity to punishment can act both as a protective factor and as a risk factor for aggression. This relationship depended on the type of aggression studied and the emotional regulation abilities. These findings can help to inform the design of programs aimed at reducing aggressive behaviour. This work was funded by Junta de Andalucía (projects: EMERGIA20_00056 and UMA18-FEDERJA-137) to Alberto Megías Robles.

No significant relationships.

Many internationally studies, in the last two decades, found problematic internet use associated with a variety of psychosocial problems, but in Portugal this is a recent research question specially in adults.

To explore the relationship between problematic Internet use, emotional regulation and self-esteem.

138 Portuguese subjects (77.5% females), with a mean age of 27.76 years old (SD = 8.98, range: 18-58) filled in the Portuguese versions of the Generalized Problematic Internet Use Scale-2, the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale.

Negative consequences subscale of generalized problematic internet use was positively correlated with all the emotional regulation difficulties subscales and negatively with Self-Esteem, and positively with daily hours of internet usage. A similar result was found for Self-Deficient Regulation subscale, except for Clarity subscale. Mood Regulation was correlated with Strategies, Goals and Self-Esteem. Males showed higher levels of Negative Consequences. Age and age onset of Internet use were negatively correlated with Mood Regulation, Self-Deficient Regulation and Negative Consequences. A statistically significant difference in Mood Regulation, Self-Deficient Regulation and Negative Consequences in marital status levels, and in professional situation, with higher median scores in divorced and single without a relationship and in student subjects; no significant differences were found in educational level.

Generalized problematic Internet use, especially their Negative Consequences, is associated with higher emotional dysregulation, low self-esteem, lower age and lower age of Internet onset, being divorced or single without a relationship and being student, and it is more prevalent in males.

No significant relationships.

Self-Generated Stress might be defined as stress that is created by oneself by engaging in behavior or making decisions that ultimately add strain to pre-existing personal stress. The Self-Generated Stress Scale (SGSS; Flett et al. 2020) is a seven-item self-report measure built to assess this tendency to make one’s own life more stressful.

To analyze the psychometric properties of the Portuguese Version of the SGSS.

Participants (127 medicine and dentistry students; 78.0% female) answered an online survey including the preliminary Portuguese version of the SGSS and other validated questionnaires: Maslach Burnout Inventory – Students Survey, Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales, HEXACO-60 and Big Three Perfectionism Scale.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed that the unidimensional model presented good fit indexes (χ2/df=1.546; RMSEA=.0666, p<.001; CFI=.982 TLI=.972, GFI=.960). The Cronbach’s alfa was .868. Pearson correlations between SGSS and the other measures were significant (p<.01) and moderate/high: Burnout, .412; Stress/Anxiety/Depression, >.550; Perfectionism, .600; Emotionality, .315; Extroversion, -.411. After controlling for the effect of Emotionality and Extroversion, SGSS explained significant additional increments of 19.9% and 14.0% of the DASS and MBI variance; controlling for Perfectionism, the increments were respectively of 27.9% and 2.0%. SGSS mean score (22.96±5.90 was not significantly different by gender.

As observed with the original English-language scale, the Portuguese version of SGSS showed good validity (construct and convergent-divergent) and internal consistency. As such, the SGSS might be useful in further investigation, particularly to explore the different pathways between personality traits, emotional regulation processes and psychological distress.

No significant relationships.

Adolescent major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with disrupted processing of emotional stimuli and difficulties in cognitive reappraisal. Little is known however about how current pharmacotherapies act to modulate the neural mechanisms underlying these key processes. The current study therefore investigated the neural effects of fluoxetine on emotional reactivity and cognitive reappraisal in adolescent depression.

Thirty-one adolescents with MDD were randomised to acute fluoxetine (10 mg) or placebo. Seventeen healthy adolescents were also recruited but did not receive any treatment for ethical reasons. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), participants viewed aversive images and were asked to either experience naturally the emotional state elicited (‘Maintain’) or to reinterpret the content of the pictures to reduce negative affect (‘Reappraise’). Significant activations were identified using whole-brain analysis.

No significant group differences were seen when comparing Reappraise and Maintain conditions. However, when compared to healthy controls, depressed adolescents on placebo showed reduced visual activation to aversive pictures irrespective of the condition. The depressed adolescent group on fluoxetine showed the opposite pattern, i.e. increased visuo-cerebellar activity in response to aversive pictures, when compared to depressed adolescents on placebo.

These data suggest that depression in adolescence may be associated with reduced visual processing of aversive imagery and that fluoxetine may act to reduce avoidance of such cues. This could reflect a key mechanism whereby depressed adolescents engage with negative cues previously avoided. Future research combining fMRI with eye-tracking is nonetheless needed to further clarify these effects.

Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) or bipolar disorder (BD) exhibit difficulties with emotional cognition even during remission. There is evidence for aberrant emotional cognition in unaffected relatives of patients with these mood disorders, but studies are conflicting. We aimed to investigate whether emotional cognition in unaffected first-degree relatives of patients with mood disorders is characterised by heterogeneity using a data-driven approach.

Data from 94 unaffected relatives (33 of MDD patients; 61 of BD patients) and 203 healthy controls were pooled from two cohort studies. Emotional cognition was assessed with the Social Scenarios Test, Facial Expression Recognition Test and Faces Dot-Probe Test. Hierarchical cluster analysis was conducted using emotional cognition data from the 94 unaffected relatives. The resulting emotional cognition clusters and controls were compared for emotional and non-emotional cognition, demographic characteristics and functioning.

Two distinct clusters of unaffected relatives were identified: a relatively ‘emotionally preserved’ cluster (55%; 40% relatives of MDD probands) and an ‘emotionally blunted’ cluster (45%; 29% relatives of MDD probands). ‘Emotionally blunted’ relatives presented with poorer neurocognitive performance (global cognition p = 0.010), heightened subsyndromal mania symptoms (p = 0.004), lower years of education (p = 0.004) and difficulties with interpersonal functioning (p = 0.005) than controls, whereas ‘emotionally preserved’ relatives were comparable to controls on these measures.

Our findings show discrete emotional cognition profiles that occur across healthy first-degree relatives of patients with MDD and BD. These emotional cognition clusters may provide insight into emotional cognitive markers of genetically distinct subgroups of individuals at familial risk of mood disorders.

Emotional regulation, understood as the emotional ability to repair emotional states, is a skill closely linked to adaptation during aging. People who are capable to manage their emotions have greater control over moods, applying adaptive regulation strategies that allow them to maintain positive moods and modify or regulate negative ones. It has been observed that gender can be a relevant variable related to emotional regulation. In this sense, it is considered that women may be more skillful than men to emotional regulation strategies, benefiting from more successful emotional management strategies.

Verify if there are differences in the ability of emotional regulation between older men and women.

The sample consisted of 851 healthy older adults, of whom 299 were men and 554 women. The participants were recruited from elderly leisure centers in the city of Valencia (Spain). To assess emotional regulation, the regulation dimension of the Trait Meta-Mood Scale 24 (TMMS-24) was used.

Significant differences were obtained in the emotional regulation dimension based on gender (F1, 851 = 0.075, p = 0.010), finding higher levels in women than in men (3.64 vs. 3.49).

There is an apparent advantage of women in relation to emotional regulation, showing more skill than men in the management of emotional states. This is an important finding considering the impact of emotional regulation on adaptation during aging. This adaptative advantage has a greate importance in generation pleasant emotional states that contribute to healthy aging.

No significant relationships.

The process of emotional regulation allows the patient to deal with various situations throughout life, since it includes the ability to create and control emotions, in order to guide action and interaction with others. However, people with alcohol use disorder (AUD) is not always able to give appropriate responses to surronding situations in the face of certain specific emotions.

We aimed to evaluate the use of emotional regulation strategies in people with AUD.

A descriptive and correlational study was conducted. A sociodemographic questionnaire, that included variables to assess aspects related to AUD, and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire were used.

The sample had 25 participants, mostly male, average age of 46.68 years. 44% were married, and most cases had an withdrawal time larger than 3 months. Regarding emotional regulation strategies, it was found that the participants resort more to cognitive reassessment (M=26.59,SD = 7.54), compared to emotional suppression (M = 15.16, SD = 5.03). Statistically significant differences were found between genders in relation to cognitive reassessment (U = 29.00; p = 0.02). No correlations were found between withdrawal time, treatment time, cognitive reevaluation and emotional suppression.

Results show differences between gender, and the absence of a relationship between educational qualifications in cognitive reassessment, contradicting previous findings on general Portuguese population. This data points to the need to implement intervention programs in this population, taking into account the gender variable, and including the development of the ability to identify and express emotions, as well as of strategies to deal with emotional aspects.

Commitment to sports is especially important for well-being in people with disabilities (Malm et al., 2019), although mental health problems are common among Paralympic athletes (Hunt et al., 2019). Importance of representations of and regulation in sport situations was supported for different kind of sports (Moran, 1993, Suinn R., 1982, Hardy et al., 1996) but Paralympic ones.

The aim was to reveal aspects of psychological regulation important for achievement and longer commitment to Paralympic sports comparing to non-Paralympic sports.

51 athletes from Paralympic sports (49.1% candidates and masters of sports) filled Questionnaire of Image Representations of Professional Activity of Athletes (Leonov et al., 2020) measuring general importance and self-appraisals of different aspects of image representation and regulation in sport activities: control of temporal, spatial, informational, technical and tactical, energetic aspects, game intelligence, motivational, emotional and social aspects (Cronbach’s alphas .61-.89). Data were compared to 399 athletes without disabilities (48.4% candidates and masters of sports).

Comparing to athletes without disabilities, Paralympic athletes higher appraise general importance and their capacities for emotion regulation during sport situation (t=2.26-3.35, p<.01). High-level Paralympic atheletes report marginally better emotion regulation (t=1.74, p<.10). Longer experience in sport in Paralympic athletes is associated with better representations of spatial and social aspects of sport situations and better emotion regulation (r=.25-.29, p<.05).

Data suggest that improvement of emotion regulation in sport situation in Paralympic athletes could be helpful for longer participation and better achievement. Research is supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 19-78-10134.

Research is supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 19-78-10134

The aim of the present study was to investigate emotional regulation and attachment in adolescents with anorexia nervosa (AN).

Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder (ED) characterized by self-starvation driving by weight, shape, and eating concerns and extreme dread of food, eating, and normal body weight. Dysfunctional emotional processing and regulation play an important role in the development and maintenance of eating disorders (EDs). Difficulties with emotional awareness and regulation in EDs are hypothesized to have their origins in childhood attachment.

The study population (N=20) consists of two research groups of patients with AN (group A) and general population controls (group B), matched for gender and age. The age of patients was 12-18 years. All adolescents were female. This study examined the attachment states of mind, assessed by the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), and emotion regulation difficulties, measured by the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS).

Group A reported significantly higher attachment insecurity (82% vs 50%) than group B. Group A show higher DERS total (nonacceptance, goals, and impulsivity scores) than group B.

Study results show a crucial role of attachment insecurity and emotional dysregulation in the development and maintenance of AN. Developing interventions to improve emotional management skills in the treatment of patients with AN can be an important component in improving treatment outcomes.

Physical exercise is a well-documented treatment for individuals with mental disorder. It helps improve symptoms and functioning of these individuals. Moreover, recent studies indicated that exercise improve emotional regulation which is one of the main target in borderline personality disorder (BPD) treatment. Therefore, exercise might have important benefits in this population. However, no previous study examined this effect.

This pilot study documents the facceptability of a protocol testing the effects of exercise on the response to a negative emotion in adults with BPD.

28 adults with a diagnosis of BPD have been recruited in a psychiatric hospital. Participants filled several questionnaires then viewed a scene from Silence of the Lambs to induce negative emotions. They were then assigned to 20 minutes of exercise or a neutral video of 20 minutes. Affects were assessed 7 times during the protocol.

In this sample, 9 participants reported at least equal levels of affect after the induction than before. Preliminary results show a tendency of higher response of physical exercise than control on positive affects and no participant had any adverse effect from exercise.

This pilot study was the first to test the effects of exercise on symptoms of BPD. It also informs on the best way to conduct the principal study. First, the mood induction was poor, thus it will be changed for a stronger induction strategy. Then, the control intervention will be a placebo exercise. These modifications will enable a better understanding of the effects of exercise on emotion regulation with BPD population.

There is suggestive evidence linking hoarding with several problems in emotional regulation, and though this is shared with OCD patients, it may not correlate to the presence of obsessive symptoms.

The present study aimed to examine self-reported deficits in emotion regulation (ER) and obsessiveness among individuals with hoarding disorder (HD) in comparison with others with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and healthy controls

Twenty-two adult outpatients with HD, twenty-two with OCD and twenty-two age and gender matched healthy control (HC) participants completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) which measures respondents tendency to regulate their emotions in two ways: Cognitive Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression. They fulfilled as well the OCI-R which evaluates six groups of OCD symptoms: Washing, Checking, Ordering, Obsessing, Hoarding, and Neutralizing.

The HD and OCD groups scored higher, (p 0.04), on Cognitive Reappraisal than did the HC group. There was no significant difference between groups in Expressive Suppression. HD and HC groups scored significantly lower, (p < 0.001), in OCI-R than OCD patients.

Results suggest that OCD and HD are characterized by self-reported deficits in ER, but this relationship in HD patients is not solely attributable to obsessive symptoms.

Maternal age has progressively increased in industrialized countries. Most studies focus on the consequences of delayed motherhood for women's physical and mental health, but little is known about potential effects on infants' neurodevelopment. This prospective study examines the association between maternal age and offspring neurodevelopment in terms of both psychomotor development (Ages & Stages Questionnaires-3) and emotional competences (Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire).

We evaluated a cohort of healthy pregnant women aged 20–41 years and their offspring, assessed at 38 weeks gestation (n = 131) and 24 months after birth (n = 101). Potential age-related variables were considered (paternal age, education level, parity, social support, maternal cortisol levels, and maternal anxiety and depressive symptoms). Bayesian ordinal regression models were performed for each neurodevelopmental outcome.

Maternal age was negatively associated with poor child development in terms of personal-social skills [odds ratio (OR) −0.13, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.77–0.99] and with difficult temperament in terms of worse emotional regulation (OR −0.13, 95% CI 0.78–0.96) and lower positive affect (OR 0.16, 95% CI 0.75–0.95). As for age-related variables, whereas maternal anxiety symptoms and cortisol levels were also correlated with poor child development and difficult temperament, maternal social support and parental educational level were associated with better psychomotor and emotional competences.

Increasing maternal age may be associated with child temperament difficulties and psychomotor delay in terms of social interaction skills. Early detection of neurodevelopment difficulties in these babies would allow preventive psychosocial interventions to avoid future neuropsychiatric disorders.

Perinatal mental illnesses are a major public health issue, which untreated can have devastating impacts on women and their families. Problems with emotion regulation are a common feature across perinatal mental illnesses.

This study sought to evaluate the impacts of dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) skills groups for mothers and babies in a community perinatal service. We hypothesised that community perinatal DBT skills groups that included babies would reduce distress and improve emotional regulation.

A mixed-methods within-subjects design was utilised with outcome measures collected pre- and post-intervention. Qualitative interviews exploring mothers’ experiences of bringing their baby to group were also conducted.

Results indicated that DBT skills groups significantly improved levels of psychological distress and emotional regulation.

Community perinatal DBT skills groups are effective when babies are present. Moreover, benefits of including babies were identified, under the themes of Self as Mother, Shared Experience, and Impact of Babies.

Individual with internet gaming disorder (IGD) often experience a high level of loneliness, and neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that amygdala function is associated with both IGD and loneliness. However, the neurobiological basis underlying these relationships remains unclear.

In the current study, Granger causal analysis was performed to investigate amygdalar subdivision-based resting-state effective connectivity differences between 111 IGD subjects and 120 matched participants with recreational game use (RGUs). We further correlated neuroimaging findings with clinical measures. Mediation analysis was conducted to explore whether amygdalar subdivision-based effective connectivity mediated the relationship between IGD severity and loneliness.

Compared with RGUs, IGD subjects showed inhibitory effective connections from the left pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC) to the left laterobasal amygdala (LBA) and from the right medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) to the left LBA, as well as an excitatory effective connection from the left middle prefrontal gyrus (MFG) to the right superficial amygdala. Further analyses demonstrated that the left pACC-left LBA effective connection was negatively correlated with both Internet Addiction Test and UCLA Loneliness scores, and it mediated the relationship between the two.

IGD subjects and RGUs showed different connectivity patterns involving amygdalar subdivisions. These findings support a neurobiological mechanism for the relationship between IGD and loneliness, and suggest targets for therapeutic approaches that could be used to treat IGD.