Emotion Regulation Deficits among People at Risk for Suicide

Suicide is a leading cause of death. One factor associated with risk for suicide is emotion regulation deficits. There is evidence linking suicide risk with self-reported difficulties in emotion regulation. However, the nature of such difficulties remains largely unknown.

Existing research has mainly relied on self-reports, and did not clearly distinguish between deficits experienced at different stages of the regulatory process.

ERDS will address this gap by assessing whether people at risk for suicide experience deficits in three individual stages of the emotion regulation process.

Specifically, ERDS will test whether people at risk for suicide differ from psychiatric and non-psychiatric controls in their attempts to decrease negative emotions (Study 1), in their access to emotion regulation strategies (Study 2) and in their ability to implement effective strategies (Study 2).

ERDS will also test whether such differences are moderated by gender.

To do so, ERDS will go beyond self reports and utilize carefully controlled behavioral tasks and physiological measures of emotional reactivity.

ERDS will also utilize Experience Sampling Methods to track emotion regulation and suicidal ideation in daily life (Study 1).

Finally, ERDS will use experimental designs to test whether providing assistance in two different stages of emotion regulation improves emotion regulation efficacy among people at risk for suicide (Study 2). By doing so, ERDS could reveal mechanisms underlying emotion regulation impairment in this population.

To conclude, ERDS will provide invaluable information on whether and how emotion regulation is impaired among people at risk for suicide.

Gaining such knowledge could potentially help people at risk for suicide to better regulate emotions, hopefully reducing their need to resort to more extreme solutions for their suffering. Therefore, ERDS could potentially inform theory as well as treatment and prevention.