Affective and Social-Emotional Difficulties in Adolescents and Young Adults: Risk and Protective Factors, Mechanisms, and Precision Interventions

Affective and social-emotional difficulties, including alexithymia, social anxiety, emotional dysregulation, and related internalizing symptoms, have become increasingly important issues in contemporary psychiatry and mental health research. These difficulties are particularly salient among adolescents and young adults, who are undergoing rapid biological, psychological, interpersonal, and social transitions. Individuals with alexithymia often experience difficulties in identifying, describing, and regulating emotions, whereas those with social anxiety may show heightened fear of negative evaluation, avoidance of interpersonal situations, and impaired social functioning. These emotional and interpersonal vulnerabilities may further contribute to a wide range of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, problematic mobile phone use, internet-related addictive behaviors, self-harm risk, and reduced well-being.Although previous studies have provided valuable evidence regarding the prevalence, correlates, and consequences of alexithymia and social anxiety, several important questions remain insufficiently addressed. First, the risk and protective factors associated with affective and social-emotional difficulties are often examined in isolation, while their complex interactions across individual, family, school, peer, digital, and sociocultural contexts remain underexplored. Second, the psychological mechanisms linking emotional processing difficulties to mental health outcomes require further clarification, especially with regard to social interaction anxiousness, core self-evaluations, self-esteem, emotion regulation, interpersonal sensitivity, loneliness, and digital media use. Third, there is a growing need to move beyond traditional group-level associations toward more person-centered, network-based, longitudinal, and data-driven approaches that can identify heterogeneous profiles, dynamic symptom interactions, and individualized intervention targets.This Research Topic aims to advance interdisciplinary understanding of affective and social-emotional difficulties by bringing together research on alexithymia, social anxiety, emotional dysregulation, interpersonal functioning, and related mental health outcomes. We particularly welcome studies that identify risk and protective factors, clarify underlying psychological and neurobiological mechanisms, and develop or evaluate precision interventions. By integrating developmental psychopathology, clinical psychology, psychiatry, educational psychology, digital mental health, network analysis, and intervention science, this Research Topic seeks to promote a more comprehensive and personalized understanding of how affective and social-emotional difficulties emerge, persist, and can be effectively prevented or treated.This Research Topic welcomes empirical, theoretical, methodological, and applied contributions addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:1) Risk and protective factors for alexithymia, social anxiety, emotional dysregulation, and related affective or social-emotional difficulties;2) Psychological mechanisms linking emotional processing difficulties to depression, anxiety, problematic mobile phone use, internet-related addictive behaviors, loneliness, self-harm risk, and well-being;3) The role of family, peer relationships, school climate, teacher-student relationships, social support, and sociocultural context in affective and social-emotional development;4) Digital media use, online social interaction, cybervictimization, and problematic mobile phone or internet use in relation to alexithymia, social anxiety, and emotional problems;5) Person-centered approaches, including latent profile analysis, latent transition analysis, growth mixture modeling, and other methods for identifying heterogeneous subgroups;6) Network analysis, cross-lagged panel network models, ecological momentary assessment, and intensive longitudinal designs for examining dynamic symptom interactions;7) Neurobiological, cognitive, and behavioral mechanisms underlying affective and social-emotional difficulties;8) Screening, assessment, and early identification of high-risk individuals in school, community, and clinical settings;9) Precision prevention and intervention strategies, including digital interventions, school-based interventions, cognitive-behavioral interventions, emotion regulation training, mindfulness-based interventions, and personalized mental health services;10) Cross-cultural, comparative, and longitudinal studies on affective and social-emotional difficulties across developmental stages.We encourage submissions using diverse methodological approaches, including cross-sectional and longitudinal survey studies, experimental studies, clinical trials, intervention studies, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, qualitative studies, mixed-methods research, and computational or machine-learning approaches. Contributions that have clear implications for prevention, assessment, intervention, and mental health service delivery are especially welcome. Topic editors: Hui Zhou, Xinwei Li, Weilong Xiao Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85994/affective-and-social-emotional-difficulties-in-adolescents-and-young-adults-risk-and-protective-factors-mechanisms-and-precision-interventions