Mood and Emotion Regulation in Clinical Psychology Temporary Fashion or Important Milestone?
By Nils Pfeiffer Over the last decade, clinical psychologists have been intrigued by mood and emotion regulation and how they could be linked to mental health. New promise for the use of mood and emotion regulation in therapy comes from vibrant research on the development and treatment of psychological disorders. This has turned mood and emotion regulation into mainstream topics in clinical psychology. But are they only a temporary fad or are they important milestones in the understanding and treatment of mental disorders?
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have been introduced. ne of the fundamental findings that has recently emerged is that several mental
disorders are associated with difficulties in mood and emotion regulation⁴. For instance, people who are affected by major depressive disorder or anorexia nervosa frequently have trouble feeling, understanding, reducing, or adjusting their emotions. Furthermore, the deficits in emotion and mood regulation are not only associated with a current diagnosis but they are also associated with the risk
for future
symptoms.
Interestingly, these associations are not specific to one
For instance, dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) combines several elements for improving people’s skills for mood and emotion regulation and has become the standard treatment for patients with borderline personality disorder. As another prominent example, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy helps people to take an accepting and non-judgmental stance towards their own mood states and emotional processes. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy reduces the risk for recurring episodes of depression⁶.
mental disorder, but rather appear to apply across Why is there such a focus on mood and emotion regulation in clinical psychology at the moment? diagnoses¹,²,³. However, the current interest in mood and emotion regulation in clinical psychology is not only driven by research on the development of mental disorders. Rather, a similar focus has emerged in psychotherapy research at the same time. Several interventions, focussing in particular on mood and emotion regulation, 23
The Looking Glass
Psychology as a scientific discipline developed during the last century. At the beginning of the twentieth century, behaviourists rejected the notion that people’s own view of the world (i.e., introspection) represented valid data. Instead, they used experimental methods to investigate behaviour that was easily observable. But is