Strategies for Managing Impairing Emotional Outbursts

Impairing emotional outbursts in youth significantly affect child and family functioning and confer enormous costs and burden on systems of care. Outbursts arise in the context of different disorders and psychosocial risk factors and often represent maladaptive or deficient coping strategies. Identifying modifiable factors that trigger and reinforce outbursts is key to preventing their recurrence. The goal is to generalize adaptive coping across environments, using evidence-based treatments that include parent management training and interventions based on CBT, to teach the child and family more effective observational, coping, and negotiation strategies. A shared approach and the strategic use of well-established interventions among health care professionals and across service systems would go a long way toward better addressing the needs of the most challenging children and families. © 2023 Wolters Kluwer Health. All rights reserved.