Research on illness perceptions has confirmed that patients' beliefs are associated with important outcomes in a broadening range of illnesses and risk factor testing. New interventions based on this model have the potential to improve patient outcomes but have yet to be widely developed and applied.

We present an expanded common-sense model of self-regulation that delineates emotion regulation strategies for coping with illness-related distress, and we describe how it can be used to design self-regulation interventions for promoting adjustment and well-being. Two therapeutic interventions guided by this model are reviewed: a self-regulation writing technique for promoting adaptation to stressful experiences and an emotion regulation intervention for women with breast cancer. The implications of these and related studies for designing self-regulation interventions are discussed. Therapeutic interventions must give appropriate attention to both problem-focused regulation and emotional regulation processes in order to confer optimal benefits for individuals with physical health conditions. This expanded model can be used to synthesize findings from the growing body of research on emotion regulation, formulate new hypotheses, and identify constructs to manipulate and assess in health intervention research.

No abstract