The ontogeny of chronic distress: emotion dysregulation across the life span and its implications for psychological and physical health

•Emotion dysregulation contributes to psychopathology and poor health.•Biological and contextual mechanisms underlying problematic outcomes are important.•An ontogenic perspective can elucidate trajectories leading to chronic distress.

Development is characterized by continuity and change across the lifespan. This is especially true of emotions and emotion regulation strategies, which become increasingly complex and variegated over development. Recently, researchers have begun to characterize severe emotion dysregulation (ED) across the life span. In particular, there is increasing data delineating mechanisms by which emotional distress leads to poor health, early mortality, and intergenerational transmission of psychopathology. In this review, we present converging evidence that many physical and psychological problems have identifiable and treatable origins in childhood ED. When the literature is examined from an ontogenic process perspective it becomes clear that many phenotypically distinct forms of mental and physical distress emerge from the same underlying emotional processes expressed differently across development.