Emotion regulation, coping with schizophrenia

A person with schizophrenia typically experiences more negative emotions and has more stressors than average. A new study by University of Georgia psychologists revealed a surprising finding that could help those who struggle with the illness: While people with schizophrenia tend to manage low-level negative emotions, they struggle to do so as those negative emotions increase.

People regulate their emotions to get from one feeling to a more preferred state, whether that is a return to calm, a move toward happiness, not feeling quite as angry, or leveraging a different emotion entirely.

Using clinical data from outpatients diagnosed with psychotic disorders and a control group, the study, focused on the identification stage of emotion regulation and how the process differs. The researchers used a scale that translates to 1-10 for levels of negative emotion, with 10 representing the highest state of anxiety or emotional distress.

“The idea of identification in a healthy person tracks as you would expect: as negative emotion increases, they’re more likely to manage that,” said Ian Raugh, doctoral candidate and lead author on the new study. “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.”

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