The Emotional Resources Group: Provisional outcome data for a pilot six-session emotion regulation programme for secondary care

Objective: To examine the effectiveness of a new, six-session emotion regulation group intervention designed for the secondary care setting: The Emotional Resources Group (ERG).

Method: In this pilot study, participants were recruited by referral from secondary care mental health services. Forty-seven individuals participated in the study. Participants who attended the ERG were compared on measures of emotion regulation, well-being, and self-efficacy, pre- and post-intervention.

Results: Intent-to-treat analyses indicated highly statistically significant improvements in measures of emotion regulation, well-being, and self-efficacy, accompanied by large effect sizes. In addition, improvements in emotion regulation produced good rates of both reliable and clinically significant change.

Conclusions: The ERG may be an effective, brief intervention to improve emotion regulation in the secondary care setting, worthy of further evaluation.

Practitioner points: Clinical implications Emotion regulation may be an appropriate treatment target to improve well-being and self-efficacy in a transdiagnostic population. The ERG may be effective as a brief emotion regulation intervention for secondary care mental health settings. Outcomes of the ERG appear to be equivalent to other more intensive group-based emotion regulation interventions. The ERG's tailored design may be responsible for positive outcomes. Limitations There was a small sample size. There was no control group. There was no follow-up data.