Intervention to Enhance Affect Regulation Among At-Risk Early Adolescents: Impact On Measures of Emotional Competence

Objective: Adolescents with mental health problems exhibit higher rates of sexual risk behaviors than their peers. Two studies examining self-regulation of emotions and behavior in early adolescence have found associations with sexual risk taking and substance use longitudinally (Hessler & Katz, 2010; Raffaelli & Crockett, 2008). This study aimed to evaluate a small, controlled study of an intervention designed to enhance early adolescents’ emotional awareness, affect management skill use, and safer sexual attitudes.

Methods: Seventh graders (n=138; mean age=13.1, 38% Caucasian; 51% male) with mental health symptoms attending public schools were recruited for a 12-session, small-group, after-school HIV-prevention intervention study focused on affect regulation concepts as a strategy for reducing risk behavior. Participants completed measures on private laptop computers at baseline, followed by participation in an Affect Management (AM) intervention or a Health Promotion (HP) comparison condition. Immediately after completing the intervention, approximately two months later, participants (n=121) completed a subset of measures related to emotional competence.

Results: Data were analyzed using ANCOVAs adjusting for baseline scores. Compared to participants in the Health Promotion group, adolescents who received the Affect Management intervention endorsed more awareness of their feelings (g=.38, F(1, 117)=4.70, p=.032), and more knowledge about HIV (g=.41, F(1,110)=4.97, p=.028). Moderate effect sizes were also noted on measures of affect management strategy use, g=.29, F(1, 115)=2.94, p=.089, and self-efficacy for managing emotions, g=.30, F(1, 116)=3.31, p=.072. No significant trends were noted on scales assessing identification of feelings, describing feelings, attitudes toward abstinence, or self-efficacy for HIV prevention.

Conclusions: Affect regulation may represent a pathway to prevention for many adolescent risk behaviors, including substance use and sexual behavior, yet identifying strategies for developing these skills, particularly among youth with mental health symptoms, has remained a challenge. To our knowledge this is the first intervention study (although exploratory) to specifically target affect regulation skills with early teens (12-14 years old). Three of the emotion constructs assessed demonstrated trends favoring the intervention condition with modest effect sizes (.29-.38). These results, though not conclusive, provide some support for the short term impact of this intervention targeting emotional competence among at-risk youth, demonstrating that early adolescents can benefit from such instruction, which may have an impact on risky behaviors.