Adults with serious mental illness (SMI) demonstrated substantial improvement in experiential avoidance and emotion dysregulation over the course of intensive inpatient treatment, a recent study found, with significant variability in patterns of change. Researchers evaluated adult patients with SMI (n=994) who completed an average of 38.6 days of inpatient treatment. Latent growth curve (LGC) methods were used to model emotion dysregulation trajectories, estimating expected remission based on individual patterns of change. They found:

• Absolute reductions in experiential avoidance and emotional dysregulation were substantial with large effect size improvements.

• Initial scores for experiential avoidance and emotion dysregulation were higher for patients with diagnoses of bipolar, depressive, anxiety, and personality disorders, whereas male gender was associated with lower initial scores.

• Substance use diagnoses were associated with rapid improvement in experiential avoidance and specific emotion dysregulation involving goal-directed behavior and impulse control.

Citation: Fowler JC, Clapp JD, Madan A, Allen JG, Oldham JM, Frueh BC. Emotion dysregulation as a cross-cutting target for inpatient psychiatric intervention. [Published online ahead of print July 27, 2016]. J Affect Disord. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2016.07.043.