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Abnormal Pattern of Emotional Regulation Identified in People With Schizophrenia
Patients with schizophrenia tend to regulate low-level negative emotions too much and high-level negative emotions too little, according to study findings published in the European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience.
“The idea of [emotional regulation] identification in a healthy person tracks as you would expect: as negative emotion increases, they’re more likely to manage that,” said study lead author Ian Raugh, a doctoral candidate in the psychology department at the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia. “At lower levels, say 1 or 2, you’re probably not going to do anything to change it. But as the level of negative emotion goes up, a healthy person is much more likely to engage in efforts to change how they are feeling.”
Researchers compared data on emotional regulation from ecological momentary assessment over 6 days for 48 clinically stable outpatients with schizophrenia and 52 healthy controls.
People with schizophrenia felt the need to regulate their emotions at a higher rate than healthy controls, according to the study. When negative emotions were at lower levels, those with schizophrenia over-regulated. But when negative emotions ramped up, they under-regulated, while healthy individuals worked to manage their emotions.
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“That’s really the abnormality,” said Raugh, “that people with schizophrenia don’t seem to be trying to manage their emotions as much when their emotions are really high.”
Researchers speculated that could be due to defeated beliefs, learned helplessness, or simply exhaustion from a consistent effort required to regulate lower-level negative emotions.
“A lot of that comes down to they’re not regulating as much when it would be most advantageous to do so,” said Raugh. “Our future studies will try to understand more about why they would regulate less at higher levels.”
Additionally, future studies plan to investigate whether the same regulation abnormality is present in youth at risk of schizophrenia.
“Heightened stress reactivity has long been seen as a key risk factor, but these results suggest that regulating that stress response must also be considered,” said senior study author Gregory Strauss, PhD, director of the University of Georgia Clinical Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. “If the same problems are also present years before the illness onset, tailored psychological treatments may have promise for preventing schizophrenia.”
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