Het Effect van Acceptance and Commitment Therapy op de Psychologische Flexibiliteit van Adolescenten met Depressieve Symptomen en de rol van Cognitieve Emotieregulatiestrategieën op dit Effect

Abstract

Currently, only a few studies are known which have researched ACT on adolescents. This longitudinal study explores the effect of ACT on psychological flexibility of adolescents with depressive symptoms, examining whether the use of adaptive and maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies has a mediating effect on this effect. Based on previous research, it was expected that following ‘ACT your way’ would lead to more frequent application of adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies and an increase of psychological flexibility and decrease depressive symptoms and the use of maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Also, as a harbinger for the mediation analyzes, a coherence was expected between the psychological flexibility during the pre-measurement, psychological flexibility during the post-measurement and the difference score between both the adaptive and maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies during the pre-measurement and post-measurement. The CDI-II, CERQ and AFQ-Y were used to measure the depressive symptoms, cognitive emotion regulation and psychological flexibility of adolescents. These questionnaires were taken by N= 26 adolescents, girls (n= 20, 77%) and boys (n= 6, 23%) within the age of fourteen and 26 years old (M= 18 and SD= 2.83). These results show that the use of adaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies and the psychological flexibility of adolescents increase and the depressive symptoms and the use of maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies decrease after following ‘ACT your way’. There was only a significant coherence observed between the psychological flexibility during the pre-measurement and the psychological flexibility during the post-measurement. Thus, these results show that ‘ACT your way’ has a positive effect on the psychological flexibility of adolescents with depressive symptoms. Herein, adaptive and maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies appear to have no mediated effect.