The Association Between COVID-19-Related Persistent Symptoms, Psychological Flexibility, and General Mental Health Among... 2025 Yu & McCracken

[Andy]

Full title: The Association Between COVID-19-Related Persistent Symptoms, Psychological Flexibility, and General Mental Health Among People With and Without Persistent Pain in the UK

Abstract​

Objectives: Persistent symptoms following COVID-19 may adversely impact the general mental health of people with chronic pain, and psychological flexibility may buffer these impacts. However, it remains unclear whether such lasting implications of COVID-19 differ between people with and without chronic pain. This study investigated the relationships between persistent symptoms post-COVID-19, psychological flexibility, and general mental health among people with and without persistent pain during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK.

Methods: A total of 204 adults living in the UK were recruited via social media and completed an online survey, including measures of persistent symptoms, depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-9), anxiety (General Anxiety Disorder-7), insomnia (the Insomnia Severity Index), and psychological flexibility (the Multidimensional Psychological Flexibility Inventory), and were included in the analyses.

Results: Participants with persistent pain (n = 70) experienced more-persistent symptoms, poorer general mental health, and a higher level of psychological inflexibility compared with participants without persistent pain (n = 133). Overall, the relationships between persistent physical symptoms, general mental health, and psychological (in)flexibility showed similar patterns in the two groups. Participants with more-persistent physical symptoms experienced significantly poorer general mental health. Furthermore, people with higher levels of psychological inflexibility reported worse general mental health. There was little evidence that psychological (in)flexibility could “buffer” the association between persistent physical symptoms and general mental health.

Conclusions: People with chronic pain appear more vulnerable to persistent symptoms and reduced general mental health compared with people without pain. Treatments that reduce psychological inflexibility, such as ACT, may improve outcomes for people with persistent symptoms post-COVID-19.

Open access

 

[Utsikt]

Even more pretend research by pretend researchers, using highly flawed questionnaires to assess arbitrary concepts, and with clear bias towards one, and only one, causal direction.

It’s remarkable how they just ignore their own findings. Apparently, psychological flexibility was not associated with the amount of symptoms. And for the people with pain, higher flexibility was associated with more depression when they had more symptoms.

Participants with more persistent physical symptoms experienced significantly poorer general mental health. However, their persistent symptoms burdens were not associated with their levels of psychological flexibility or psychological inflexibility.

Surprisingly, we only observed the moderating effect of psychological flexibility among people with persistent pain, and not in the expected direction. Specifically, the association between persistent symptoms and depression appeared stronger in participants with a higher level of psychological flexibility.

Yet, for some unknown reason, they conclude that targeting flexibility might be beneficial:

Treatments that aim to reduce psychological inflexibility, such as ACT, can potentially help reduce the impact of persistent symptoms on health and well-being in people with “long COVID” symptoms.

How ironic that researchers on psychological flexibility demonstrate so low flexibility themselves.

 

[rvallee]

Participants with more-persistent physical symptoms experienced significantly poorer general mental health. Furthermore, people with higher levels of psychological inflexibility reported worse general mental health. There was little evidence that psychological (in)flexibility could “buffer” the association between persistent physical symptoms and general mental health.

Typical feeding the output as the input. One direction of causality is obvious, based on common sense alone, far more plausible and likely, while the other is obviously back-asswards, and of course it's the back-asswards one that is evermore asserted, not just based on no supporting evidence at all, but constantly contradicted, here again, which they ignore, and they call it evidence-based medicine.

I don't think any of the questionnaires they use is of any value at all. They've gotten so stuck with them that they can't even think that they are misleading them.

How ironic that researchers on psychological flexibility demonstrate so low flexibility themselves.

Everything they have been claiming about us for decades is projection. Every single thing.