The role of emotional processing, ambiguity tolerance and metacognitive beliefs in predicting Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) in nurses of Sardasht Health Network

Anxiety disorders, including Anxiety disorders, including Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), are among the most common disorders that have affected many people. The way of analyzing and interpreting the events, tolerating or not the ambiguous situation and metacognitive beliefs can predict GAD. The purpose of this research was the role of emotional processing, tolerance of ambiguity and metacognitive beliefs in predicting GAD in nurses of Sardasht Health Network.

The statistical population included all nurses working in the Sardasht health network (including hospital, specialized clinics and health centers in the city).  A total of 155 nurses were selected as the final sample of the study using the available sampling method.  The data collection tools were emotional processing, ambiguity tolerance, metacognitive beliefs and anxiety symptoms questionnaires. The present study was a descriptive and correlational study and the data was analyzed through Pearson's correlation coefficient and multivariate regression.

Statistical findings showed that emotional processing, ambiguity tolerance and metacognitive beliefs together explain 63.2% of the variance of GAD. Also, the findings show that all three predictive variables have a significant contribution in predicting GAD; so that the variable of cognitive processing (p = 0.01, β = 0.433), ambiguity tolerance (p = 0.01, β = 0.101), and metacognitive beliefs (p = 0.01, 0.503 = β) positively predicts GAD.

According to the findings, emotional processing, tolerance of ambiguity and metacognitive beliefs play a role in causing GAD; Accordingly, by changing the type of emotional processing and increasing the ability to tolerate ambiguity and changing defective metacognitive beliefs, it helped to reduce GAD.