Investigating the relationship between Emotional Expressivenessand Experiential Avoidance with the mediation of SocialCompetence in students with generalized anxiety disorder

Generalized anxiety disorder leads to a decrease in mental health and quality of life for people. Therefore the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between emotional expressiveness and experiential avoidance with the mediation of social competence in students with generalized anxiety disorder in Mashhad.

The present study was a descriptive correlation in terms of applied purpose and data collection method. The statistical population of the research consisted of all the first and second grade high School students of Mashhad who were studying in 2022-2023. 210 students with symptoms of generalized anxiety were selected by cluster sampling method. To collect data, the generalized anxiety questionnaire of Spitzer et al (2006), Emotional Expressiveness questionnaire of King & Emmons (1990), Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ-II) of Bond et al (2011), and Social adequacy questionnaire of Felner et al (1990) were used. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling analysis by SPSS 24 and Lisrel 8.8 software.

Based on the obtained results, the direct effect of positive emotion, intimacy and social adequacy variables on experiential avoidance is negative and significant and the direct effect of negative emotion expression variable on experiential avoidance is positive and significant (P<0/01). In addition to the direct effect, positive emotion, intimacy and negative emotion expression had an indirect effect on experiential avoidance through social adequacy. (P<0/01). Therefore, it can be said that the considered model had a good fit, in other words, social adequacy has a mediating role in the relationship between emotional expression and experiential avoidance in general anxiety disorder.