Improving emotion recognition is associated with subsequent mental health and wellbeing in children with severe behavioural problems

Wells, Amy E., Hunnikin, Laura M., Ash, Daniel P. and van Goozen, Stephanie H. M. 2020. Improving emotion recognition is associated with subsequent mental health and wellbeing in children with severe behavioural problems. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 10.1007/s00787-020-01652-y

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Abstract

Impaired emotion recognition is a transdiagnostic risk factor for a range of psychiatric disorders. It has been argued that improving emotion recognition may lead to improvements in behaviour and mental health, but supportive evidence is limited. We assessed emotion recognition and mental health following a brief and targeted computerised emotion recognition training in children referred into an intervention program because of severe family adversity and behavioural problems (n = 62; aged 7–10). While all children continued to receive their usual interventions, only children impaired in emotion recognition (n = 40) received the emotion training. Teachers blind to whether or not children had received the training rated children’s mental health problems before and 6 months after the training. Participants who received the emotion training significantly improved their recognition of negative and neutral facial expressions. Although both groups showed improved behaviour at follow-up, the reduction in behavioural problems was only significant in children who received the emotion training. Post-training emotion recognition scores predicted mental health problems 6 months later independently of initial emotion recognition ability and severity of behavioural problems. The results are consistent with the view that targeting emotion recognition can improve longer term functioning in individuals with disruptive behaviour, although further research using fully randomised designs is needed before causal conclusions can be drawn with confidence.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Psychology
Additional Information:	This article was (co-)authored by Cardiff NDAU researchers
Publisher:	Springer Verlag
ISSN:	1018-8827
Funders:	ESRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	22 September 2020
Date of Acceptance:	20 September 2020
Last Modified:	01 Dec 2020 09:54
URI:	http://orca.cf.ac.uk/id/eprint/135009

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