Associations of experiential avoidance, cognitive fusion and mindfulness with anxiety and depression among college students

  Objective  To explore associations of experiential avoidance, cognitive fusion, and mindfulness with anxiety and depression in college freshmen, and to analyze mediating effects of mindfulness on the relationship between experiential avoidance and anxiety and depression.

  Methods  Totally 366 college freshmen, selected by using cluster sampling from two universities in Beijing and Henan provinces, were surveyed with Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-Second Edition (AAQ-Ⅱ), Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire (CFQ), Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), and Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) in December 2014.

  Results  For all the participants, the average scores were 19.48 ± 7.62 for AAQ-Ⅱ, 28.97 ± 10.84 for CFQ, 66.32 ± 10.98 for MAAS, 31.27 ± 6.95 for SAS, and 34.82 ± 7.70 for SDS, respectively.Experiential avoidance showed a positively predictive function to anxiety and depression (β = 0.429, 0.459; P < 0.001). In addition , mindfulness partially mediated the relationship between experiential avoidance and anxiety, depression (β = – 0.198, – 0.173; P < 0.001, 0.01), with the values of mediating effect of 22.06% and 18.80%.

  Conclusion  Experiential avoidance has a positively predictive effect on both anxiety and depression; mindfulness has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between experiential avoidance and anxiety, depression.