Symposium at IACAPAP 2026, Hamburg, Germany
ARIA members took part in a symposium at the IACAPAP Congress in Hamburg, Germany: "Alexithymia and Emotion Processing Deficits as a Transdiagnostic Risk Factor and Treatment Target in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology."
The symposium pulled together new work on the developmental origins, assessment, clinical correlates, and treatment of alexithymia in young people. Across four talks, the speakers looked at how alexithymia feeds into emotional dysregulation and psychiatric vulnerability, and why it is a promising target for early identification and intervention.
The talks were:
- Dr Irina Jarvers (Germany) on alexithymia as a transdiagnostic risk factor in early development, with data from preschool children showing that already that early higher alexithymia went along with more internalizing and externalizing symptoms.
- Dr David A. Preece (Australia) on the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ) as a solid, developmentally appropriate tool for adolescents, including longitudinal data linking alexithymia to later depression and anxiety through its effect on emotion regulation.
- Dr Angelika Ecker (Germany) on alexithymia and emotion regulation in non-suicidal self-injury, with findings from an online study of 328 participants linking lifetime NSSI to higher alexithymia, more expressive suppression, and less cognitive reappraisal.
- Prof. Johan Bjureberg (Sweden) on internet-delivered emotion regulation therapy for adolescents (IERITA), with randomized controlled trial data showing bigger reductions in alexithymia and evidence that those reductions mediated drops in self-harm frequency.
A big thank you to everyone who came along, joined the discussion, and made the session such a lively one. We really appreciated the interest and the conversations that followed.
