Promising feasibility of emotion regulation intervention for autistic emerging adults

Abstract Emotion regulation is an individual’s ability to adjust one’s emotions to obtain desired goals. Autistic individuals often face challenges with emotion regulation. Despite high service needs in emotion regulation in the autism community, such services are sparse for autistic emerging adults. The current study modified dialectical behavior therapy skills training and developed a manualized eight-week group psychoeducation program, named Skills Improvement on Emotion Regulation for Adults (SIERA). SIERA was implemented on four groups of 19 autistic emerging adults (Mage = 21.9; 10 females; 9 males). Upon completion of the program, individual and focus group interviews were conducted to assess its feasibility to assess whether the findings of SIERA can be sustainable for continuous implementation. Thematic analysis was used, and four themes were generated: (1) Lesson Learned from SIERA , (2) The Newness of SIERA , (3) Voices from the Experience , and (4) SIERA Sheds Light on Emotion Regulation . Our findings indicated that the SIERA program is feasible to increase adaptive emotion regulation skills for autistic emerging adults. Future studies need to focus on continuous implementation for its potential utility and collaborating with stakeholders to reduce service gaps in autistic emerging adults to maximize psychosocial outcomes in their transition.