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Psychological Inflexibility Predicts Depression and Anxiety During Covid-19 Pandemic

Ilhan Cicek*, Ahmet Tanhan **, Metin Bulus ***

* Batman University Health College, Batman, Turkey.

** Economic and Social Research Center – ESAM (Ankara, Turkey), Department of Counseling at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (North Carolina, USA) and Adiyaman University (Adiyaman, Turkey); Institute for Muslim Mental Health (Michigan, USA), Association for Contextual Behavioral Sciences, Turkey Chapter (Istanbul, Turkey).

*** Adiyaman University, Faculty of Education, Adiyaman, Turkey.

Periodicity:May - July'2021
DOI : https://doi.org/10.26634/jpsy.15.1.18198

Abstract

COVID-19 has affected people across the globe in psychosocial and economic aspects. This process has been difficult for most people, even more for some others including (teachers, administrators at educational settings) working in educational settings. The purpose of this study was to understand the predictive effect of psychosocial factors (gender, age, marital status, Additional Time Spent (ATS) on social media, ATS internet compared to the pre-COVID-19 pandemic and expert programs), and psychological inflexibility on depression and anxiety for teachers employed in the Ministry of Education during the pandemic. Participants included 514 adults (49% women). The findings of the study revealed that psychological factors and psychological inflexibility together explained 47% of the variance in depression and 42% of the variance in anxiety. Specifically, gender, social media and psychological inflexibility were significant predictors of both depression and anxiety during the pandemic. In addition to the predictive effect of psychosocial factors, these results indicated that psychological flexibility was important to develop further evidence based mental health services to address psychopathology and enhanced wellbeing. The findings of the study were discussed in the light of literature, and some suggestions were provided for future research and practice.

Keywords

Psychological Inflexibility, Teachers, Depression, Anxiety, COVID-19 Pandemic.

How to Cite this Article?

Cicek, I., Tanhan, A., and Bulus, M. (2021). Psychological Inflexibility Predicts Depression and Anxiety During Covid-19 Pandemic. i-manager's Journal on Educational Psychology, 15(1), 11-24. https://doi.org/10.26634/jpsy.15.1.18198

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