Emotion regulation among individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is associated with brain abnormalities in the areas that regulate emotions, and it is postulated that people with OCD have difficulty downregulating ( = reducing) their negative emotions. This study recruited 20 participants with OCD and 20 controls to rate 294 emotional photos (emotional stimuli not related to OCD) for emotional valence. Participants were then asked to downregulate while they saw the 20 photos with the highest negative ratings and 20 photos with the highest positive ratings. Participants with OCD had more difficulty downregulating their negative emotions than controls. Evidence for that is that (1) participants with OCD gave significantly higher ratings to the affectively negative photos in the postregulation phase, after adjusting for their preregulation ratings and (2) participants with OCD took significantly more time to regulate both their negative and positive emotions. The findings suggest that individuals with OCD not only present with the symptoms that are specified in the OCD diagnostic criteria of DSM-IV TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2000), but also with difficulty downregulating their negative emotions to non obsessive-compulsive (nonOC) affectively negative stimuli. Clinicians may consider adding emotion regulation skills to psychological treatments of OCD.published_or_final_versionClinical PsychologyDoctoralDoctor of Psycholog