Following the Affect: Learning to Observe Emotional Regulation

On inpatient psychiatric units, staff deal with children and adolescents whose affect escalates quickly and intensely. These same children experience strong emotions that they can neither understand nor explain. To intervene effectively, inpatient staff must understand the regulation issues underneath the escalated behaviors. Emotion Regulation theory and the developmental line of emotional understanding are useful concepts in assessing and intervening with these children and adolescents. Presented here are criteria to guide inpatient staff's assessment of children and adolescents with emotion regulation difficulties. The assessment cues are based in concepts of Emotion Regulation and emotional understanding and are accompanied by suggested intervention strategies.