The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale - Short Form (DERS SF)

Emotion dysregulation often emerges early in development and is a core feature of many psychological conditions. The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) is a well validated and widely used self-report measure for assessing emotion regulation problems among adolescents and adults. The DERS has six subscales with five to eight items each (36 total).

A substantial body of research has shown significant positive associations between scores on the DERS (specifically the total score) and symptoms of a range of psychological disorders, including borderline personality disorder (Gratz et al., 2006), generalized anxiety disorder (Mennin et al., 2002), substance use disorders (Fox et al., 2007; Gratz and Tull, 2010), social anxiety (Rusch et al., 2012), health anxiety (Bardeen and Fergus, 2014), post-traumatic stress disorder (Ehring and Quack, 2010), and bipolar disorder (Becerra et al., 2013; Van Rheenen et al., 2015).

The DERS short form (DERS-SF) instrument maintains the excellent psychometric properties and retains the total and subscale scores of the original measure with half the items.