Emotion regulation in depression, anxiety and stress: a focus on catastrophising

Emotion regulation is fundamental to how we all feel, think about and experience our daily lives. So far the majority of studies into emotion regulation have focused on theories relating to strategies such as rumination, suppression and reappraisal. The first study focused on developing a wider understanding of how emotion is regulated through developing emotion regulation profiles of depression, anxiety and stress. The second study developed an emotion regulation questionnaire designed for experimental use. Unlike existing emotion regulation questionnaires it was designed to be atheoretical and considerably broader in scope. The relationship between catastrophising and other mental health traits was highlighted in the initial study and found to be mostly unexplored by the emotion regulation literature. The final three studies aimed to build on existing understanding of catastrophising. The first of these used a catastrophising induction developed for the study. The results suggested that in laboratory conditions, catastrophising reduces positive mood and increases negative mood compared to a control group. The forth study created and successfully validated the Catastrophising Questionnaire. This found catastrophising to generally fall into two groups, general catastrophising and health and safety catastrophising, where the later tended to be less associated with poor mental health outcomes. The final study developed a two-week intervention to reduce catastrophising, which was delivered to a community sample through a mobile phone or tablet based application. Where participants were randomly assigned to the control or the experimental group. Participants in the experimental condition were found to catastrophise comparatively less. They also reported less negative mood, more positive mood and improved more on mental health indicators than the control group