Psychological Inflexibility's Associations With Lifetime Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety has protective functions and could be considered evolutionarily adaptive. Yet, anxiety can also become problematic, and anxiety disorders are common and costly. The present study tested a transdiagnostic conceptualization of anxiety disorders that suggests anxiety disorders are associated with inflexible responding to anxiety, even after controlling for anxiety symptom severity.

A total of 1118 participants across two samples (n = 853 undergraduates; n = 265 community members) completed a battery of self-report measures, including demographics, anxiety (DASS-21), psychological inflexibility (MPFI), and reported lifetime anxiety-related diagnoses.

A series of logistic regressions in each sample showed that anxiety was associated with increased odds of endorsing any and each additional lifetime anxiety-related diagnosis, and that psychological inflexibility was incrementally associated above and beyond anxiety severity with greater odds of endorsing any and each additional disorder.

Findings replicated across samples, supporting the conceptualization that one's response to anxiety, beyond how severe that anxiety is, may be an important factor for understanding the degree to which anxiety would interfere in someone's life (i.e., anxiety disorder). Clinically targeting one's response to anxiety may be an important component of mitigating anxiety-related suffering.