Emotional dysregulation in childhood and disordered eating and self‐harm in adolescence: prospective associations and mediating pathways

Abstract

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“A true life changing event I will take with me on the journey of life”: Results from a mixed- method pilot study evaluating an emotion intervention for people with eating disorders

“…While our paper adds to this growing literature and could address high rates of relapse by focusing on the underlying emotion di culties which precede and maintain ED thoughts and behaviours (Henderson et al, 2021;Treasure et al, 2012;Warne et al, 2023), it also suggests that psychoeducation about emotions can be successfully conducted online in a cost-effective way. In the UK, demand for treatment far outstrips the capacity of adult ED services (Striegel Weissman & Rosselli, 2017; Viljoen et al, 2022).…”

“…There is evidence to support that at least some of these emotion di culties, such as emotion regulation problems, are premorbid longitudinal predictors of disordered eating and EDs (Henderson et al, 2021;Warne et al, 2023). Moreover, these concepts and di culties are linked: for instance, being unable to identify emotions makes it harder to know how to regulate unpleasant feelings (Brown et al, 2018;Sfärlea et al, 2019), and believing emotions are uncontrollable in uences the ways in which people attempt to regulate their emotions, if they try at all (Ford & Gross, 2019;Gutentag et al, 2017).…”

Comparing Ruminative and Distracting Responses and Emotion Regulation Difficulties in Early Community Adolescents With and Without Self-Harm

“…Furthermore, this study found that the experience of being a victim of bullying was significantly associated with an increased likelihood of self-harm (OR 4.495; p<0.001). Many studies have consistently reported an association between experiences of bullying victimization and increased rates of self-harm and SAs [ 17 , 26 - 28 ]. In the present study, there was no direct relationship between selfharm and being a perpetrator of bullying.…”

“…In this study, the self-harm group experienced greater difficulty in emotion regulation than the control group. There is ample evidence showing the relationship between emotional regulation difficulties and adolescent suicide and selfharm [ 28 , 35 ]. The concept of emotion regulation, which forms the basis of the DERS used in this study, emphasizes the functionality of emotions and focuses on adaptive ways of responding to emotional distress: 1) awareness, understanding, and acceptance of emotion; 2) ability to control behaviors when experiencing negative emotions; 3) flexible use of situationally appropriate strategies to modulate the intensity and/or duration of emotional responses rather than eliminating emotions entirely; and 4) willingness to experience negative emotions as part of pursuing meaningful activities in life [ 20 ].…”

“…Compared with the control group, the self-harm group exhibited difficulties in all subscale items of the emotion regulation difficulties scale, such as non-acceptance of negative emotions, lack of emotional clarity, inability to engage in goaldirected behavior when distressed, difficulties controlling impulsive behavior when distressed, and limited access to emotion regulation strategies. Recent studies that have conducted long-term follow-ups from childhood to adolescence suggest that difficulties with social cognition (cognitive processes underlying social interaction such as perception, interpretation, and generation of responses to other people’s behaviors and mental states) and mentalization in early life may represent clear mediating pathways leading from emotional regulation disorders to self-harm [ 28 ]. Therefore, interventions aimed at enhancing social cognition and mentalization could be effective in reducing self-harm behaviors [ 28 ].…”