Psychological inflexibility as main factor associated with emotional symptomatology and suicide risk: Two trans-diagnostic models for risk in young adults from Cundinamarca

Abstract

Introduction: Psychological inflexibility is the systematic use of ineffective behavioral regulation strategies that in the long-term worsen psychological distress and quality of life. Evidence suggests that psychological inflexibility is a trans-diagnostic process essential to mental-health that predicts “emotional and affective disorders”. This study proposes two trans-diagnostic models of risk based on experiential avoidance, cognitive fusion, repetitive negative thinking, and values obstruction and generalized pliance as part of a “psychological inflexibility” super-ordinated factor using available instruments which already have psychometric properties and factor structure analyses, along with evidence of validity and reliability in Colombia. Said super-ordinated factor is expected to be associated to the outcome variables in the current sample and have some relationship with other latent super-ordinated factors deemed “sociodemographic variables”, “sexuality”, “mental health history” and “suicide risk”. Method: There was a cross-sectional correlational design and a non-randomized convenience sampling. The sample was 541 young adults from Cundinamarca aging from 18 to 39 (M=28.86; SD=5.66), most of them cisgender (98%; n=530), assigned female at birth (81.9%; n=443) and identified as women (81.5%; n=441). They responded to an online survey inquiring sexuality, sociodemographic and mental health history aspects and including emotional symptomatology, experiential avoidance, cognitive fusion, repetitive negative thinking, values obstruction and generalized pliance assessment. Structural Equation Modelling was used to adjust the aforementioned models. Results: Both models had a good fit. Psychological inflexibility (β= .70) and suicide risk (β= .33) had a moderate relationship (r= .66) and were associated with emotional symptomatology. Emotional symptomatology (β= 1.56) and psychological inflexibility (β=-.77) had a strong relationship (r= .95) and were associated with suicide risk. Discussion: There is preliminary evidence for the role of psychological inflexibility and sexuality related variables as potential risk factors associated with emotional symptomatology and suicide risk, supporting some of the assumptions from the ACT model.

Keywords

• clinical psychology
• psychological inflexibility
• emotional symptomatology
• contextual behavioral science
• structural equation modeling
• risk factors.