Dispositional mindfulness and mental health: Exploring the interplay of decentering, non-attachment, emotion regulation difficulties and affectivity as implicated mechanisms

Previous researches have proposed several isolated mechanisms linking dispositional mindfulness (DM) and mental health. The present study tested a comprehensive explanatory model that could provide an integrative framework to determine the relative contributions of these isolated mechanisms to the positive effects of DM on lowering mental health problems. This study proposed a model that explores the mediating roles of decentering, nonattachment, emotion regulation difficulties (ERD), positive affectivity, and negative affectivity in the impact of DM on mental health problems. The model was tested using self-report data on the said constructs from 251 participants (118 males, 133 females) aged 18–55 years. Findings revealed that DM is associated with lower mental health problems directly as well as indirectly by enhancing decentering and nonattachment and reducing ERD and negative affect. Unlike males, DM had a direct significant effect on mental health problems in females. Moreover, the indirect pathways differed across genders. In males, DM impacted mental health problems via reducing ERD, enhancing nonattachment, and enhancing nonattachment via decentering. In females, DM improved mental health by reducing ERD and negative affect, and reducing negative affect via ERD. Thus, this study provides an integrative model of various mediating mechanisms of DM-mental health relationship and highlights that metacognitive and affective mediating mechanisms do not interact in producing the salutary effects of mindfulness on mental health. Further, it was noted that DM enhances mental health mainly via metacognitive pathways in males but only via affective pathways in females, which was a novel finding. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.