A Precision Medicine Approach to Target Engagement for Emotion Regulation

Conditions studied

Emotional Regulation, Depression, Anxiety, Borderline Personality Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Eating Disorders

About this study

The proposed study is designed to first test whether teaching people personalized or standardized emotion regulation skills leads to greater decreases in daily negative emotion intensity. Second, using data from an initial sample, the investigators will prospectively assign an independent sample of participants to receive their predicted optimal or non-optimal skills to determine if it is feasible and efficacious to match participants to the most appropriate training condition. Results of these studies may identify the mechanisms by which emotion regulation interventions impact emotional functioning and allow for the development of personalized, evidence-based, and scalable emotion regulation interventions.

Interventions

• Behavioral: Checking the Facts — Checking the Facts is a form of cognitive reappraisal in which participants identify negatively-valenced automatic thoughts and both generate and consider evidence that challenges the validity of those thoughts.
• Behavioral: Opposite to Emotion Action — Opposite to Emotion Action teaches participants to identify their momentary emotion(s), identify the associated behavioral urge(s), and implement a behavior inconsistent with that urge (e.g., approaching a feared stimulus instead of avoiding it).
• Behavioral: Mindfulness of Current Emotions — Mindfulness of Current Emotions teaches participants to nonjudgmentally observe the experience of their emotions, including physiological and cognitive responses to those emotions.

Primary outcomes

• Changes in Positive and Negative Affect Schedule-Short Form (7 times per day for 42 days)

Eligibility information

Study locations

• Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210 United States