A Qualitative Investigation of Emotion Dysregulation in Perinatal Mental Health
Abstract
Background: Mood and anxiety disorders are common during the perinatal period, impacting both parental health and infant development. Understanding the core symptoms and processes that underlie these conditions is essential for improving screening and intervention. Emotion dysregulation (ED) is a key transdiagnostic factor, yet research has largely relied on questionnaires and physiological measures of ED that offer limited insight into individuals’ lived experiences. This study aimed to qualitatively explore how individuals with heightened ED understand, experience, and regulate their emotions during pregnancy and the postpartum, and how these experiences differ from pre-pregnancy. Methods: Perinatal participants (N = 16) were recruited within the Women’s Health Concerns Clinic at St. Joseph’s Healthcare, Hamilton. Participants who endorsed experiencing ED were invited to complete a semi-structured qualitative interview related to their experience with ED. Interview data was analysed using a directed content analysis. Themes: Participants described heightened emotion reactivity during the perinatal period, characterized by rapid mood changes and heightened intensity of anger, shame, guilt, anxiety, sadness, hopelessness, and joy. Participants described feeling unprepared to manage the increased intensity of negative emotions, particularly anger, compounded by reduced access to activities that had previously supported emotion regulation (e.g., self-care or social activities). Factors that contributed to vulnerability included life stressors, sleep disruption, and unmet expectations of both others (e.g., support) and oneself (e.g., coping ability). Conclusions: These findings enrich our understanding of perinatal-specific ED and highlight processes that may inform tailored interventions, that could be preventative in nature, for this vulnerable and understudied population.
Related
- Insomnia and Emotion Dysregulation Across the Perinatal Period: Daily and Longitudinal Associations with Anxiety and Depression
- Developmental Trajectories and Transitions in Callous-Unemotional Traits Across Adolescence: The Role of Parenting and Emotion Dysregulation
- The Transformation of Birth Metaphors Into Emotion Awareness Through Birth Art: A Qualitative Study
- The Role of Parental Reflective Functioning in the Association Between Parental and Youth Emotion Regulation Among Youth With Serious Mental Health Challenges
- Machine learning reveals a multimodal, transdiagnostic signature of emotion dysregulation vulnerability across patients, offspring, and controls
BibTeX
@misc{barrett2026qualitative,
title = {{A Qualitative Investigation of Emotion Dysregulation in Perinatal Mental Health}},
author = {Emily Barrett and Danielle Rice and Talia Tissera and Benicio Frey and Arela Agako and Professor David L. Streiner and Sheryl Green},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/2fnrt_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/2fnrt_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A Qualitative Investigation of Emotion Dysregulation in Perinatal Mental Health
AU - Emily Barrett
AU - Danielle Rice
AU - Talia Tissera
AU - Benicio Frey
AU - Arela Agako
AU - Professor David L. Streiner
AU - Sheryl Green
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/31
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/2fnrt_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/2fnrt_v1/
AB - Background: Mood and anxiety disorders are common during the perinatal period, impacting both parental health and infant development. Understanding the core symptoms and processes that underlie these conditions is essential for improving screening and intervention. Emotion dysregulation (ED) is a key transdiagnostic factor, yet research has largely relied on questionnaires and physiological measures of ED that offer limited insight into individuals’ lived experiences. This study aimed to qualitatively explore how individuals with heightened ED understand, experience, and regulate their emotions during pregnancy and the postpartum, and how these experiences differ from pre-pregnancy. Methods: Perinatal participants (N = 16) were recruited within the Women’s Health Concerns Clinic at St. Joseph’s Healthcare, Hamilton. Participants who endorsed experiencing ED were invited to complete a semi-structured qualitative interview related to their experience with ED. Interview data was analysed using a directed content analysis. Themes: Participants described heightened emotion reactivity during the perinatal period, characterized by rapid mood changes and heightened intensity of anger, shame, guilt, anxiety, sadness, hopelessness, and joy. Participants described feeling unprepared to manage the increased intensity of negative emotions, particularly anger, compounded by reduced access to activities that had previously supported emotion regulation (e.g., self-care or social activities). Factors that contributed to vulnerability included life stressors, sleep disruption, and unmet expectations of both others (e.g., support) and oneself (e.g., coping ability). Conclusions: These findings enrich our understanding of perinatal-specific ED and highlight processes that may inform tailored interventions, that could be preventative in nature, for this vulnerable and understudied population.
ER -