Research
The Deep Emotional Work Academy invites researchers and institutions to turn clearly specified interventions into testable studies. This hub presents current preprints, open questions and practical starting points for collaboration.
Read the current preprint · Explore Deep Emotional Stabilization Groups research opportunities · Discuss a research collaboration
Current research
Could guided affective imagery support emotional access in eating-disorder care?
Preprint · Not peer reviewed · 24 August 2026
This paper turns participant diaries from a multicomponent pilot into a focused study question: what changes after guided imagery and before optional movement? It defines what a prospective study should measure without claiming that imagery caused improvement or was an active component.
Read the preprint on Zenodo · Discuss a related study
Deep Emotional Stabilization Groups as a research starting point
Deep Emotional Stabilization Groups (DESG) offer a concrete starting point for research collaboration. The implementation kit specifies the session sequence, guide language, facilitator responsibilities, participant materials, consent, safety, referral, adaptation and evaluation.
This manualized structure lets a research team cite a dated kit, define what was delivered, document fidelity and adaptations, and build a reproducible protocol. It does not establish efficacy, safety or a treatment effect.
Research opportunities
- Feasibility and acceptability: Can local teams deliver the sequence responsibly, and how do participants experience it?
- Fidelity and adaptation: Which elements should remain stable, and which language, cultural or setting adaptations are needed?
- Sequence and outcomes: What changes after guided imagery, after later components and over time?
- Safety and reach: What distress, unintended effects or referral needs occur, and whom does the format not reach?
Explore Deep Emotional Stabilization Groups · Open the implementation kit on Zenodo
From project evaluation to formal research
The kit's anonymous self-evaluation supports local learning. It is not formal research. A study needs its own protocol, participant information and consent, ethics and data-protection review, outcome and harm measures, and a clear data and publication plan.
A practical sequence starts with co-design, feasibility and safety. If the findings support further study, researchers can move to prospectively registered outcome studies, controlled comparisons, longer follow-up or multisite replication.
DEWA can contribute dated intervention materials and method context. Research partners bring the institutional, ethical, methodological and data-governance framework needed to study them.
Starting point, not conclusion
Existing literature supports the rationale for selected components and implementation choices. It does not directly validate DESG as a complete intervention. How the full format performs in real settings remains an open research question.