[Treatment of disorders of emotion regulation in the Adolescents Center at the Central Intitute of Mental Health]. / Behandlung von Störungen der Emotionsregulation im Adoleszentenzentrum am Zentralinstitut für Seelische Gesundheit.

Severe disorders of emotion regulation, e.g. in the context of mental illnesses, such as borderline disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and complex posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), often begin in childhood and adolescence and influence the psychosocial development of those affected, often into adulthood. Professional treatment therefore often requires longer term planning, if possible from a single source. The sectorized structure of the current psychiatric healthcare system, however, makes this process more difficult or is even a hindrance and promotes high hospitalization rates and chronification. The concept of the Adolescents Center for Disorders of Emotion Regulation at the Central Institute of Mental Health functions as a model concept for long-term, cross-sectoral treatment structures. A constant treatment team from child, adolescent and adult psychiatry and psychotherapy provides evidence-based psychotherapy according to the guidelines of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) for those affected between the ages of 16 and 24 years. Conceptually, inpatient, day care and staged outpatient treatment modules complement each other in order to not only provide psychotherapy to the young patients in this important phase of life but also to accompany and support them in completing school and training, in partnership and independent living.

I like her, because I like myself: self-evaluation as a source of interpersonal attitudes.

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that self-evaluation can serve as a source of interpersonal attitudes. In the first study, self-evaluation was manipulated by means of false feedback. A subsequent learning phase demonstrated that the co-occurrence of the self with another individual influenced the evaluation of this previously neutral target. Whereas evaluative self-target similarity increased under conditions of negative self-evaluation, an opposite effect emerged in the positive self-evaluation group. A second study replicated these findings and showed that the difference between positive and negative self-evaluation conditions disappeared when a load manipulation was applied. The implications of self-evaluation for attitude formation processes are discussed.

Evaluative conditioning in social psychology: Facts and speculations.

The aim of the present paper is to examine the contribution of evaluative conditioning (EC) to attitude formation theory in social psychology. This aim is pursued on two fronts. First, evaluative conditioning is analysed for its relevance to social psychological research. We show that conditioned attitudes can be acquired through simple co-occurrences of a neutral and a valenced stimulus. Moreover, we argue that conditioned attitudes are not confined to direct contact with a valenced stimulus, but can be formed and dynamically reformed indirectly, through association chains. Second, social research is examined in an effort to identify evaluative learning mechanisms. We suggest that several important phenomena in social psychology (e.g., ingroup favouritism, prejudice, name letter effect) are at least partly due to simple mechanisms of evaluative learning. The implications for attitude formation theory and for applied settings are discussed.