The role of experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion in the development of anxiety symptoms among family carers of people with dementia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Despite high prevalence of anxiety, current interventions for family carers of people with dementia are considered to be not as effective for anxiety as they are for depression. Understanding the mechanism by which a common stressor (i.e. carer subjective burden) and underlying psychological processes influence anxiety among this population is critical to inform these interventions. Roles of two psychological processes were explored: experiential avoidance in caregiving (attempt to control distressing thoughts/feelings related to caregiving) and cognitive fusion (tendency for one’s behaviour to be overly regulated by thoughts). With a sample of seventy-seven family carers, this study examined the indirect effect of carer subjective burden (ZBI-12) on anxiety (GAD-7) through experiential avoidance in caregiving (EACQ) and cognitive fusion (CFQ) using path analysis approach. The whole sample model showed a good fit to the data and accounted for 54 % of the variance in anxiety. The indirect effect of carer subjective burden on anxiety through its effect on cognitive fusion (β = 0.17), and its combined effect on experiential avoidance in caregiving and cognitive fusion (β = 0.01) were significant. Given the higher explanatory value of cognitive fusion alone, facilitating cognitive defusion through psychological interventions may be critical for preventing clinically significant levels of anxiety, particularly among those carers experiencing high levels of carer subjective burden. Results also demonstrated that carers with higher experiential avoidance in caregiving may be prone to cognitive fusion, which in turn could lead to greater anxiety. Therefore, early interventions targeting experiential avoidance may be beneficial for preventing increased cognitive fusion and anxiety.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".