Cognitive emotion regulation strategies in relation to treatment outcome in a clinical sample of adolescents with personality disorders.

The aim of this study was to examine cognitive emotion regulation strategies (CERS) of help-seeking adolescents diagnosed with personality disorders. At pre-treatment, patients (N = 116) were found to use some maladaptive but also some adaptive CERS more often than adolescents from the general population. Less than 4% of these pre-treatment CERS predicted treatment outcome. In patients whose treatment outcome according to the Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90) showed significant improvement (N = 75), a reduction of maladaptive CERS and an increase of adaptive CERS occurred. Patients that were unchanged or deteriorated (N = 41) showed no significant changes in CERS. In conclusion, pre-treatment CERS are not predictive for treatment outcome in this sample of adolescents diagnosed with personality disorders. Even though patients who use more adaptive and less maladaptive CERS have fewer symptoms, the relationship between these CERS and symptoms in this group of severe patients remains unclear.