The study of emotion regulation constitutes a major area of research for having a complete picture of human emotional experience, and several lines of evidence claim that poor emotion regulation skills are particularly deleterious in different aspects of life. Previous tDCS studies have suggested the beneficial role of DLPFC stimulation to improve emotion processing and regulation. The present study was therefore conducted to confirm and extend the effects of DLPFC stimulation on emotion regulation by including both positive and negative emotional material. In this between subjects study, participants were randomly assigned to receive active or sham stimulation over the left DLPFC. Participants viewed negative, positive, and neutral pictures while attempting to decrease, increase, or not modulate their emotional reactions. Subjective reactions were assessed via on-line ratings. The main results show that anodal tDCS stimulation over the left DLPFC slightly improves the ability to increase emotion perception for positive emotions. More interestingly, the results demonstrate that tDCS enhances the regulation of both positive and negative emotions when the baseline is considered. This study provides additional data on the use of tDCS as a tool to increase emotion regulation not only for negative affective material, but also for positive ones.

Previous studies reported that mental health and emotion regulation strategies deteriorated in the refugee sample. The main goal of the study was to analyze the mediation effect of emotion regulation strategies as expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal between resilience to helplessness – depression and flourishing. The second aim was to determine to what extent emotion regulation strategies and resilience to helplessness-depression predicted flourishing. Forty-seven Syrian refugees, aged 18-64, who were settled in Istanbul fulfilled the coping competence questionnaire (CCQ), the flourishing scale, and the emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ). The serial mediation analysis indicated that expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal had a significant indirect mediating effect between resilience to helplessness-depression and flourishing. Multiple regression analysis showed that expressive suppression was a negative predictor of flourishing. However, both cognitive reappraisal and resilience to helplessness – depression were positive predictors of flourishing. Moreover, ERQ, flourishing, and CCQ scales showed good internal reliability consistency scores in the refugee group. The study suggested that improvement in emotion regulation strategies may be a helpful strategy in the therapeutic setting.

Studies based on the most common diagnostic categories do not bring conclusive results concerning the overlapping and distinctive features of anxiety and depression, especially in the areas of attentional functioning, structure of affect, and cognitive emotion regulation. However, a new typology has been proposed which treats anxiety and depression as personality types (Fajkowska, 2013). These types – arousal and apprehension anxiety as well as valence and anhedonic depression – are constructed based on two criteria: specific structure and functions (reactive or regulative). The present paper critically examines the empirical evidence related to this approach. The data mostly confirmed the prediction that the similarities and differences in attentional and affective functioning among the anxiety and depression types would be related to their shared and specific structural and functional characteristics. The new typology turned out to be suitable for integrating the existing research findings by relating them to the structure and functions of anxiety and depression. As a result, it is useful in explaining some of the inconsistencies in literature, as it allows to identify the overlapping and distinctive features of the anxiety and depression types. It also helps to understand the mechanisms contributing to the development and maintenance of anxiety and depression, which might be useful in diagnosis and treatment. However, even though Fajkowska’s approach is an important contribution to the understanding of anxiety and depression, it is not exhaustive. Its limitations are discussed, along with proposed modifications of the theory, as well as further research directions.