A Meta-Analytic Review of Emotion Regulation Focused Psychosocial Interventions for Adolescents

This study provides a systematic meta-analysis of psychosocial interventions designed to improve emotion regulation (ER) in adolescents (ages 10–19). The authors focused on the transdiagnostic potential of ER as a skill that can be taught to improve well-being and reduce psychopathology. By screening 1,245 articles and conducting a comprehensive search, the authors identified 41 relevant studies that reported pre- and post-treatment measures of ER. The interventions ranged from school-based community prevention programs to specialized clinical treatments for disorders like ADHD, autism, and borderline personality disorder, as well as programs for war-affected and incarcerated youth.

The meta-analysis found that ER-focused interventions significantly improved outcomes, with a pooled effect size (Hedge’s g) of 0.29 for pre-to-post measures and 0.19 for studies using intervention-versus-control designs. A key finding was the significant difference in effect sizes between population types: clinical samples showed larger improvements on average than community-based samples. This suggests that interventions may have more room to demonstrate impact in populations with higher initial levels of dysregulation (a potential floor effect in community samples). The results indicate that these interventions can effectively increase adaptive skills and reduce maladaptive behaviors, providing evidence for ER as a valuable target for youth psychosocial treatment.

Emotion regulation is a transdiagnostic risk factor for a wide array of internalizing and externalizing disorders. Demonstrating that ER can be improved through targeted psychosocial training during the critical developmental window of adolescence is a significant contribution to clinical child psychology. The findings support the shift toward transdiagnostic approaches, suggesting that clinicians and educators can teach specific regulation strategies to improve youth functioning across varied diagnostic and environmental contexts.