SynthesisJournal of affective disorders2023
Associations between psychological inflexibility and mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic: A three-level meta-analytic review.
Synthesis in Journal of affective disorders, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Psychological Inflexibility and Psychological Distress in Adults: The Mediating Role of Resilience.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The Roles of Psychological Flexibility and Perceived Parental Emotional Support in Resilience and Social Anxiety Among College Students.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Using Machine Learning to Analyze the Predictors of Life Satisfaction: Focus on Lifestyle Attitudes and Psychological Factors.International journal of methods in psychiatric research · 2026Article
- Moderating Role of Psychological Flexibility in the Relationship Between Intolerance of Uncertainty and Perceived Stress Among Women Undergoing in Vitro Fertilization Treatment.Brain and behavior · 2026Article
- Parallel mediation of psychological flexibility and vulnerability between multiple-screen addiction and mental health outcomes in adolescents.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Article
- Psychometric evaluation of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) in Ecuadorian adults: evidence from a bifactor model and measurement invariance.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- War exposure and mental health in Sudanese medical students: the roles of psychological flexibility and self-esteem.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- The mediating role of social connectedness between inflexibility, the suppression of emotional expression, and symptoms of eating disorders and depression in adolescents with restrictive eating disorders referred for radically open dialectical behaviour therapy (RO DBT).Journal of eating disorders · 2025Article
- The interplay between perceived stress, psychological flexibility, and interpretation biases in undergraduate mental health.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The role of psychological flexibility and emotion regulation in the relationship between smartphone addiction and psychological wellbeing in adolescents: three-wave longitudinal serial mediation study.Health and quality of life outcomes · 2025Article
- Adolescents' Psychological Inflexibility as a Mediator Between Maternal Inflexibility and Internalizing Problems.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Psychological Flexibility, Coping Styles, and Mood Among Individuals With Cystic Fibrosis.Biopsychosocial science and medicine · 2025Article
- Child psychological maltreatment, depression, psychological inflexibility and difficulty in identifying feelings, a moderated mediation model.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Family and peer influences on adolescent psychological inflexibility: a regression mixture analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- The perceived COVID-19 pandemic risk and mental distress in China: the mediating role of interpersonal trust and the moderating role of social cohesion.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- The Effect of Lifestyle Interventions on Anxiety, Depression and Stress: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Loneliness and Relationship Well-Being: Investigating the Mediating Roles of Relationship Awareness and Distraction among Romantic Partners.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- The relationship between autistic traits and the stress of social isolation: Development of an explanatory model.Heliyon · 2024Article
- One-year predictors of PTSD symptoms, anxiety, and depression in SARS-CoV-2 survivors: psychological flexibility and major life events as main predictive factors.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
backgroundAn increasing number of research has documented the positive associations between psychological inflexibility (PI) and mental health problems (i.e., depressive, anxiety, and stress symptoms) during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the documented associations have been inconsistent. This review thus aimed to quantitatively summarize primary research to gain better estimates of these associations.
methodsA systematic literature review was conducted in six databases and three-level meta-analytic models were used to statistically synthesize effect sizes and to examine moderators of the associations between PI and depressive, anxiety, and stress symptoms.
resultsA total of 22 studies yielded 63 effect sizes on associations between PI and depressive, anxiety, or stress symptoms. The results of three separate meta-analyses revealed a large and significant association between PI and depressive (r = 0.580, 95 % CI [0.549; 0.775]), anxiety (r = 0.548, 95 % CI [0.468; 0.761]), and stress symptoms (r = 0.548, 95 % CI [0.506; 0.725]). The association between PI and depressive symptoms is stronger for males than for females, and the association between PI and stress symptoms varies by type of measure that primary studies use to assess PI and stress symptoms. LIMITATIONS: Temporal or causal conclusions are not allowed due to cross-sectional nature of the associations included in meta-analyses. Clinical samples with high levels of stress were underrepresented.
conclusionsPI seems an important risk factor for symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress, and should therefore be targeted in interventions addressing mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
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