Special Clinical Talk - Kirsten Gilbert - "The developmental psychopathology and treatment of overcontrol"

ABSTRACT:

Personality has consistently been associated with psychiatric disorders across the lifespan. One conceptualization of personality examines dimensional clustering of characteristics of ‘undercontrol’ to ‘overcontrol.’ Undercontrol and associated emotion dysregulation and impulsivity has received most empirical attention in relation to psychopathology. Meanwhile, overcontrol, a phenotype characterized by cognitive inflexibility, perfectionism, and need for control is often neglected in research. Indeed, overcontrol is associated with multiple psychiatric disorders, including anorexia nervosa, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and treatment resistant depression and anxiety. Moreover, the early origins of overcontrol in childhood and across development in relation to adaptive and maladaptive outcomes remain poorly understood. From a developmental psychopathology perspective, this talk will begin to elucidate the identification and etiology of overcontrol in childhood in relation to onset and progression of psychopathology. Using multiple levels of analysis, I will present results that overcontrol is identifiable in early childhood and associated with cognitive, neural, social and psychiatric functioning across development. Overcontrol can also be targeted in clinical intervention using an innovative psychosocial treatment, Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO DBT). I will introduce RODBT and discuss emerging clinical translational work that mechanistically targets overcontrol using RO DBT in youth and adult populations.