Abstract
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of various emotion regulation (ER) strategies on emotional distress and the urge to self-harm in response to mood induction in individuals who engaged in nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI). Sixty-one individuals who engaged in NSSI participated in this study were assigned to an experimental ER strategy group (Distraction = 20, Cognitive Reappraisal = 21, Acceptance = 20). Participants completed the Self-Injury Urge Scale (SIUS), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-State (STAI X-1), and Positive and Negative Affect Scales (PANAS) at several time points: T1) baseline; T2) after watching a film to induce negative mood; and a final time T3) after watching the film again but while using the group-specific ER strategy in response to the induced negative mood. We found that distraction effectively reduced the urge for NSSI after a negative mood induction, as measured using the SIUS. Additionally, cognitive reappraisal and distraction significantly reduced the STAI X-1 and negative affect scale (NAS) scores of the PANAS in individuals with NSSI who underwent negative mood induction. However, acceptance was significantly less effective in relieving unpleasant and undesirable inner experiences in the short term. Our findings suggest that both distraction and cognitive reappraisal are helpful in alleviating negative emotional experiences, and distraction may be useful in dealing with the urge to engage in NSSI. More evidence-based research to test the current findings is required.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Brain Research Program of the National Research Foundation (NRF), funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (No. NRF-2017M3C7A1048040). The funder had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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Data cannot be shared publicly due to issues of participant consent because we do not have the participants’ permission to share the data in their entirety with the public. Instead, deidentified data will be made available to all interested researchers upon request from the first author.
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SI, JH, and JL were involved in the design and conceptualization of the study. Material preparation and data collection were performed by SI. SI, JH, and GK contributed to the data analysis, first draft preparation, and review and editing. JH contributed to the funding acquisition. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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In, S., Hur, JW., Kim, G. et al. Effects of distraction, cognitive reappraisal, and acceptance on the urge to self-harm and negative affect in nonsuicidal self-injury. Curr Psychol 42, 9063–9070 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02151-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02151-2