Changes in Mindfulness Facets and Psychological Flexibility Associated with Changes in Depressive Symptoms in a Brief Acceptance and Value Based Intervention: An Exploratory Study

[...]changes from pre to post in three other KIMS subscales were not related to changes in depression across the whole study period. Since previous research suggests that different components of mindfulness seem to be linked differently to various psychopathological concepts (see Introduction), we further examined the combinations of different KIMS subscales and whether they were related to changes in depressive symptoms. The investigation of the subscale pairs showed significant associations with pre- to post-intervention changes in depressive symptoms, even though when examined individually only the accepting without judgment subscale had produced significant results. [...]while pre to post changes in other subscales (observing, describing, and acting with awareness) were not significantly related to pre to post changes in depressive symptoms (Table 5), significant associations were observed when the those KIMS subscales were paired with each other or with the accepting without judgment subscale (Table 6). [...]the fairly small sample size, the not diagnosed population and the biased gender distribution may have affected the results and thus limit their generalizability regarding only treatment-motivated females reporting mild to moderate symptoms of depression. [...]since psychological flexibility has been defined as a two-fold process as presented earlier (Hayes et alii, 2004, 2006), the measures available in the present study (AAQ-2, KIMS) may have captured only the first part consisting of present-moment awareness and having an accepting attitude toward experiences.