Outpatients’ ratings of use and efficiency of emotion regulation strategies

Abstract

100 outpatients diagnosed as anxious and 100 as depressed, and 418 non-clinical participants rated their use and perceived efficiency of each of ten strategies to become happy and 14 strategies to stop being angry, anxious, and sad. Findings suggested a general outpatient problem of regulating emotions at high intensity levels. Examples were that outpatients selected fewer strategies for happiness than non-clients, and rated lower user frequency and strategy efficiency for strategies both for happiness and negative emotions. Differences were, moreover, shown both for strategies which could be associated with psychiatric symptoms and for those which could not. Specific factors in emotion regulation were suggested by outpatients’ more frequent rating of avoidance, entertainment, and waiting for the emotion to pass to stop negative emotions, and by strategies which seemed to be associated with psychiatric diagnosis and emotion type. Thus, outpatients may also have problems related to their use of specific strategies for specific emotions.

Keywords:

• Emotional regulation
• differential emotions
• outpatients
• regulation strategies