Emotion Regulation and Anxiety

Chapter 8 reviews anxiety disorders of childhood and adolescence, investigating the role of emotion regulation in onset, maintenance and propagation. Based on DSM-5 criteria anxiety disorders have the following core features: Excessive, persisting anxious arousal and clinically significant symptoms causing distress or dysfunction in social, academic or other domains of functioning. Currently, CBT interventions have been created for school-aged children with anxiety including the Coping Cat and the Cool Kids programs. Despite relatively high success rates, children remaining symptomatic after treatment may benefit from emotion-focused approaches, such as Emotion-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and the Unified Protocol for the Treatment of Emotional Disorders in Youth. In addition, novel therapies have been devised targeting parents and their emotion regulation deficits like the Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) program. Future research should employ randomized control trials comparing the novel treatment approaches, treatment as usual, and standard CBT determining best practice protocols.