Everyone should get to know that it's okay to feel bad: adolescents' and parents' experiences of participating in a preventive emotion regulation skills training in a Swedish school setting - a qualitative study.
H A, E A, et al. • International journal of qualitative studies on health and well-being • 2026
Adolescents and parents described the preventive emotion regulation skills training as valuable and meaningful, while also identifying challenges related to stigma, timing, and the need for continued practice to maintain skills.
Key Findings
Results
Participants expressed a general need for emotional awareness, which was being concealed by perceived stigma and lack of knowledge about emotions.
Perceived stigma associated with mental health and emotional expression was identified as a barrier to recognizing the need for emotional awareness
Lack of knowledge about emotions was seen as an additional concealing factor
Participants highlighted the importance of understanding emotions and emotion regulation as well as recognizing the role of emotions in everyday issues
The study title reflects a key participant quote: 'Everyone should get to know that it's okay to feel bad'
Results
Parents were viewed as facilitating the learning and application of emotion regulation skills among adolescents.
Parental involvement was perceived as strengthening the transfer of emotion regulation skills to adolescents
The joint participation format (parents and adolescents together) was seen as contributing to this facilitation
This finding aligns with earlier literature highlighting the potential value of involving parents in such interventions to strengthen parent-child relationships and promote healthy emotion regulation
Twelve participants total were interviewed: seven parents and five adolescents
Results
Participants experienced increased emotional awareness and other insights that benefited their daily lives following the skills training.
Insights included increased emotional awareness as a noted benefit
Benefits were described as extending to participants' daily lives outside of the intervention context
The intervention consisted of five sessions of psychoeducation about emotions and emotion regulation skills
Both adolescents and parents reported these experiential benefits
Results
Participants perceived specific challenges with the preventive emotion regulation skills training related to timing and the need for continued practice.
Timing of the intervention was identified as a challenge
The need for continued practice to maintain skills was perceived as a challenge
These challenges were identified despite participants overall finding the training valuable and meaningful
The findings contribute to ongoing discussions in prevention research about the optimal timing of interventions
Methods
A reflexive thematic analysis of interviews with 12 participants (seven parents and five adolescents) was used to examine experiences of a joint preventive emotion regulation skills training in a Swedish school setting.
Sample consisted of 12 participants: seven parents and five adolescents
Data collection involved individual interviews that were transcribed and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis
The intervention took place in a Swedish school setting
The skills training consisted of five sessions covering psychoeducation about emotions and emotion regulation skills
The study used a qualitative approach to capture experiential and perception-focused insights
Discussion
The results highlight both benefits and challenges of jointly targeting emotion regulation preventively in adolescents and their parents within a school setting, particularly regarding recruitment and evaluation.
Recruitment was identified as a particular challenge for this type of joint preventive intervention
Evaluation of such interventions was also identified as a challenge
The findings contribute to discussions about optimal timing of interventions, emotion regulation focus, and parental involvement in prevention research
The school setting was noted as a relevant context for delivering such interventions
What This Means
This research suggests that teaching emotion regulation skills to both teenagers and their parents together in a school setting can be a valuable and meaningful experience. The study interviewed twelve people (seven parents and five adolescents) in Sweden who participated in a five-session program teaching them about emotions and how to manage them. Participants reported gaining increased emotional awareness and found these insights helpful in their everyday lives. They also felt that having parents and teenagers learn together helped parents support their children in applying the skills.
The study also found that stigma around mental health and a general lack of knowledge about emotions were acting as barriers — essentially hiding or masking people's awareness of their own need for better emotional skills. Many participants felt that it should be more widely accepted and known that it is okay to feel negative emotions, as captured in the study's title quote. Despite the positive experiences, participants also noted real challenges, including the timing of the program and the difficulty of maintaining skills without continued practice.
This research suggests that school-based programs that include both adolescents and their parents may be a promising way to build emotional health skills before serious mental health problems develop. However, practical hurdles such as recruiting families to participate and figuring out the best time to offer such programs still need to be addressed. The findings add to a broader conversation in mental health prevention about how to best design and deliver these types of programs for young people.
H A, E A, L K, B M G, M Z. (2026). Everyone should get to know that it's okay to feel bad: adolescents' and parents' experiences of participating in a preventive emotion regulation skills training in a Swedish school setting - a qualitative study.. International journal of qualitative studies on health and well-being. https://doi.org/10.1080/17482631.2026.2679416