Recruiting

Emotion Regulation

Sponsor:

Matthew Southward, PhD

Code:

NCT05651295

Conditions

Emotional Regulation

Depression

Anxiety

Borderline Personality Disorder

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 18+

Healthy Volunteers: Not accepted

Interventions

Checking the Facts

Opposite to Emotion Action

Mindfulness of Current Emotions

Study Details

Brief summary:

The proposed study is designed to first test whether teaching people personalized or standardized emotion regulation skills leads to greater decreases in daily negative emotion intensity. Second, using data from an initial sample, the investigators will prospectively assign an independent sample of participants to receive their predicted optimal or non-optimal skills to determine if it is feasible and efficacious to match participants to the most appropriate training condition. Results of these studies may identify the mechanisms by which emotion regulation interventions impact emotional functioning and allow for the development of personalized, evidence-based, and scalable emotion regulation interventions.

Conditions

Emotional Regulation

Depression

Anxiety

Borderline Personality Disorder

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Study ID

NCT05651295

Start date

Sep 29, 2023

Status verified date

May, 2026

Completion date

Dec 31, 2026

Anticipated

Primary completion date

Dec 31, 2026

Anticipated

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 18+

Healthy Volunteers: Not accepted

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Elevated emotion dysregulation

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Lack of proficiency in English
  • No access to smartphone
  • Conditions requiring greater than outpatient care

Study Design

Enrollment

390 participants

Anticipated

Allocation

Randomized

Intervention Model

Parallel Assignment

Primary purpose

Treatment

Interventions and Outcome Measures

Arms

active comparator: Personalized Condition

Participants will learn one of three emotion regulation skills (i.e., cognitive restructuring, opposite to emotion action, mindfulness) that is their personal strength, based on pre-Baseline emotion regulation capacities. They will watch an interactive video, created for the current study, in which they are taught the skill that is their personal strength. They will also be asked to complete a survey during the video in which they will input their own examples to practice the skill and to ensure attention to and comprehension of the material.

active comparator: Standardized Condition

Participants will learn all three ER skills: cognitive restructuring, opposite to emotion action, and mindfulness. Participants will be asked to watch three interactive videos that cover each skill to provide an analogue to clinical practice in which clinicians must choose whether to provide greater breadth or depth of skill coverage. These videos will be presented in a randomized order and will include the same surveys for attention and comprehension used in the Personalized Condition.

Interventions

Checking the Facts

Checking the Facts is a form of cognitive reappraisal in which participants identify negatively-valenced automatic thoughts and both generate and consider evidence that challenges the validity of those thoughts.

Opposite to Emotion Action

Opposite to Emotion Action teaches participants to identify their momentary emotion(s), identify the associated behavioral urge(s), and implement a behavior inconsistent with that urge (e.g., approaching a feared stimulus instead of avoiding it).

Mindfulness of Current Emotions

Mindfulness of Current Emotions teaches participants to nonjudgmentally observe the experience of their emotions, including physiological and cognitive responses to those emotions.

Primary outcome measure

  • Changes in Positive and Negative Affect Schedule-Short Form [ Time Frame: 7 times per day for 42 days ]

Central Contacts and Locations

Central contacts

Matthew W Southward, Ph.D.

614-247-0331copingskillsstudy@gmail.com

Locations

Ohio State University

Recruiting

Columbus, Ohio, United States, 43210

Contacts

Matthew W Southward, Ph.D.

614-247-0331copingskillsstudy@gmail.com

More Information

Sponsor

Matthew Southward, PhD

Last update posted

May 11, 2026

Last verified

May, 2026

Keywords

  • cognitive-behavior therapy
  • mechanism
  • ecological momentary assessment
  • personalization

Trial information was received from ClinicalTrials.gov and was last updated on 2026-09-10. This information was provided to ClinicalTrials.gov by Matthew Southward, PhD on 2026-05-11.