Emotional mental imagery is a powerful part of our mental landscape. Given its capacity to depict, process, and generate emotional events, mental imagery could have an important role in psychological therapies. This Series paper explores whether harnessing emotional mental imagery is meaningful to young people; ways in which interventions use emotional mental imagery; contextual and individual factors influencing intervention effectiveness; and mechanisms underpinning imagery techniques. We completed a systematic review of imagery interventions and consulted young people with lived experience (n=10) and leading international experts (n=7). The systematic search identified 86 papers covering a diverse range of imagery interventions. Across the seven categories of techniques reviewed, imagery rescripting for aversive memories, techniques targeting positive imagery, and imagery-enhanced protocols indicated the most potential. The report suggests that harnessing emotional mental imagery in psychological interventions could be a promising approach to reduce anxiety and depression and that mental health science could inform the development of new interventions and help to maximise intervention effectiveness.

情感心理意象是我们心理景观的重要组成部分。鉴于其描绘、处理和产生情绪事件的能力，心理意象可能在心理治疗中发挥重要作用。本系列论文探讨了利用情绪心理意象对年轻人是否有意义；干预使用情绪心理意象的方式；影响干预有效性的情境和个体因素；和支持图像技术的机制。我们完成了对图像干预的系统审查，并咨询了有生活经验的年轻人 (n=10) 和领先的国际专家 (n=7)。系统搜索确定了 86 篇涵盖各种图像干预的论文。在回顾的七类技术中，对厌恶记忆的图像重写，针对正面图像的技术和图像增强协议显示出最大的潜力。该报告表明，在心理干预中利用情绪心理意象可能是减少焦虑和抑郁的一种有前途的方法，并且心理健康科学可以为新干预措施的开发提供信息，并有助于最大限度地提高干预效果。