Mental illness and well‐being: an affect regulation perspective

Abstract

Mental health crucially depends upon affective states such as emotions, stress responses, impulses and moods. These states shape how we think, feel and behave. Often, they support adaptive functioning. At other times, however, they can become detrimental to mental health via maladaptive affect generation processes and/or maladaptive affect regulation processes. Here, we present an integrative framework for considering the role of affect generation and regulation in mental illness and well-being. Our model views affect generation as an iterative cycle of attending to, appraising and responding to situations. It views affect regulation as an iterative series of decisions aimed at altering affect generation. Affect regulation decisions include identifying what, if anything, should be changed about affect, selecting where to intervene in the affect generation cycle, choosing how to implement this intervention, and monitoring the regulation attempt to decide whether to maintain, switch or stop it. Difficulties with these decisions, often arising from biased inputs to them, can contribute to manifestations of mental illness such as clinical symptoms, syndromes and disorders. The model has a number of implications for clinical assessment and treatment. Specifically, it offers a common set of concepts for characterizing different affective states; it highlights interactions between affect generation and affect regulation; it identifies assessment and treatment targets among the component processes of affect regulation; and it is applicable to prevention and treatment of mental illness as well as to promotion and restoration of psychological well-being.

Efficacy of the interpersonal and social rhythm therapy (IPSRT) in patients with bipolar disorder: results from a real-world, controlled trial

“…Our patients treated with IPSRT plus pharmacotherapy reported an improvement of affective and anxiety symptoms without requiring any dose adjustment of mood stabilizers. This result, confirmed by the reduction of AMI index at 3 and 6 months, emphasizes the importance of IPSRT in reducing the psychological burden of bipolar disorder and preventing mood relapses [53,54].…”

The Effects of Stress Beliefs on Daily Affective Stress Responses

“…Similarly, according to Daniels, Harris and Briner [13], both controlled and automatic processing of stress appraisal influence the affective stress response. Given that affect has been associated with mental and physical health via multiple links, such as altering physiological functioning, influencing coping, health behavior and information processing, and affecting individuals' psychosocial resources [36][37][38][39][40][41][42], such pathways might explain the health consequences of stress beliefs. Recent studies have already provided initial evidence to support the influence of stress beliefs on the affective stress response.…”

The Effects of Stress Beliefs on Daily Affective Stress Responses

“…Similarly, according to Daniels, Harris and Briner [13], both controlled and automatic processing of stress appraisal influence the affective stress response. Given that affect has been associated with mental and physical health via multiple links, such as altering physiological functioning, influencing coping, health behavior and 7 information processing, and affecting individuals' psychosocial resources [36][37][38][39][40][41][42], such pathways might explain the health consequences of stress beliefs. Recent studies have already provided initial evidence to support the influence of stress beliefs on the affective stress response.…”