LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

Four attachment-based categories of emotion regulation in adolescent psychic troubles

Photo from wikipedia

Introduction Emotion regulation is altered in many psychiatric disorders in adolescence, but the understanding of mechanisms that underlie this alteration is still poor. Methods The PERCEPT study explores alexithymia, empathy,… Click to show full abstract

Introduction Emotion regulation is altered in many psychiatric disorders in adolescence, but the understanding of mechanisms that underlie this alteration is still poor. Methods The PERCEPT study explores alexithymia, empathy, facial emotion recognition (FER) and defence mechanisms in a sample of adolescents in psychiatric care (n = 61, 74% of girls, mean age = 15.03 y.o.), in relation with participants’ attachment styles. Results Results revealed correlations between attachment dimensions and all of the emotion regulation variables, suggesting that attachment modalities have functional links with emotional regulation at its different levels: FER accuracy was inversely correlated with avoidant attachment, while affective empathy, difficulty in identifying feelings (alexithymia) and immature as well as neurotic defence mechanisms were positively correlated with anxious attachment. Moreover, attachment categories delineated distinct emotional perception profiles. In particular, preoccupied attachment included adolescents with the highest levels of facial emotion perception (sensitivity and accuracy) and of affective empathy, whereas detached attachment included adolescents with the lowest levels of these variables. Neurotic defence mechanisms and difficulty to identify feelings were correlated with preoccupied attachment; immature defence mechanisms and difficulty to describe feelings to others characterized fearful attachment. Discussion These results suggest that attachment categories underlie emotion regulation processes in psychiatric disorders in adolescence. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

Keywords: attachment; defence mechanisms; regulation; emotion regulation

Journal Title: Frontiers in Psychology
Year Published: 2023

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.