THE BUFFER ROLE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL FLEXBILITY AGAINST THE IMPACT OF MAJOR LIFE EVENTS ON DEPRESSION SYMPTOMS

Purpose: Major life events have been positively associated with depression symptoms. Although psychological flexibility has been associated with adaptive coping skills and negatively linked with depression symptoms, it remains unclear whether psychological flexibility may operate as a protective process against the pervasive impact of major life events. Thus, the present study aimed to explore the moderator effect of psychological flexibility on the association between the cumulative number of major life events and its negative appraisal with depression symptoms. Methods: Four hundred one participants (280 female and 121 male) aged between 18 and 65 years old completed a set of self-report measures assessing the number of major life events and its appraisal, psychological flexibility, and depression symptoms. Results: Correlation analyses showed a negative and strong association between psychological flexibility and depression symptoms. Path analyses revealed that psychological flexibility attenuated the effect of the cumulative number of major life events (in the last 12 months) and its negative impact on depression symptoms. Conclusions: The study highlights the buffer role of psychological flexibility on the association between the number of major life events, its negative appraisal, and depression symptoms. These findings suggest that being able to contact with the present moment with an accepting and non-judging attitude towards internal experiences, and to


Introduction
Research has shown that stressful life events are associated with depressive symptomatology (e.g., Hassanzadeh et al, 2017;Sokratous, Merkouris, Middleton, & Karanikola, 2013;You, & Conner, 2009). The concept of life event has been described as "objective occurrences of sufficient magnitude to bring about change in the usual activities of most individuals who experience them" (Dohrenwend, Krasnoff, Askenay, & Dohrenwend, 1978, p. 207), provoking emotional changes that require a behavioural readjustment. These issues may include both unwanted (such as divorce, illness or death of a relative) and desirable events (such as academic or professional success or marriage) (Luhmann, Hofmann, Eid, & Lucas, 2012). When assessing the psychological impact of life events, it is important to assess how one interprets the stress produced by them and whether the appraisal of the event is negative or positive (Ono et al, 2017).
Life events can be classified as minor or major depending on their magnitude.
Minor events are adverse events with trivial impact (with short to medium term) that occur in the context of everyday life. On the other hand, major life events, due to their greater magnitude, have a long-term impact in the individual's life, requiring a greater readjustment (Yue, Dajun, Yinghao, & Tianqiang, 2016). Factors such as the type of the events, one´s appraisal of their impact, and one´s characteristics and strategies to deal with them, contribute not only to a diversity of responses to these events but also to different degrees of emotional impact on one´s life (Yunes, & Szymanski, 2001).
Concerning the relationship between negative major life events and depression, several studies found that these negative life events can be a risk factor for the development of psychopathology and can predict the onset of depressive symptoms (e.g., Kendler, & Gardner, 2016;Sokratous, Merkouris, Middleton, & Karanikola, 2013).
The buffer role of psychological flexibility against the impact of major life events on depression symptoms Soraia Alfaro Falcão da Fonseca (e-mail: soraia94fonseca@hotmail.com) 2018 Kessler (1997) found that depressed individuals reported a higher number of stressful life events in the last 12 months, when compared to the non-depressed. Indeed, the accumulation of major life events has been related to psychopathology, particularly to depression (e.g., Mitchell, Tynes, Umaña-Taylor &, Williams, 2015;Shrira, 2012;Tennant, 2002). Slopen and colleagues (2011) found an association between the number of events experienced in the last 12 months and a higher risk for the onset of depression symptoms. According to Suliman (2009)  and their negative appraisal with depressive symptomatology. We hypothesise that psychological flexibility will buffer the negative impact of major life events in this outcome.

Participants
The sample included 401 participants (280 women and 121 men) from the Portuguese general population. Participants presented ages that ranged from 18 to 65 years, with a mean age of 30.91 (SD = 11.66) and 14.15 (SD = 2.863) years of education.
Two hundred and seventy-one participants were single (67.6%), 102 (25.4%) were married/ living with a partner, 27 (6.7%) divorced, and 1 (0.2%) widowed. Most of the are asked to report the occurrence or absence of the specific event in the previous 12 months. For each event identified, participants are, also, asked to evaluate in a 3-point scale its positive (1-"Slightly good"; 2-"Moderately good"; 3-"Very good") or negative (1-"Slightly bad"; 2-"Moderately bad"; 3-"Very bad") impact in their lives. In this study, three variables were computed from this scale: number of major life events in last 12 months, positive appraisal and negative appraisal. what I do"); behavioural awareness (e.g., "I rush through meaningful activities without being really attentive to them") and valued action (e.g., "I behave in line with my personal values"). Participants are asked to rate the degree to which is statement is true for them using a 7-point Likert scale (0-"Never true" to 6-"Always true"). This self-report measure has demonstrated good internal consistencies for the total scale (α = 0.91) and for each 2018). In current study, the total scale has showed good internal consistency (α = .85). In the present study, we only used the depression subscale and its Cronbach's alpha was 0.95.

Procedures
The current study is part of a wider research project about the role of emotion regulation processes on one's quality of life and mental health. All ethical requirements concerning research with humans were fulfilled and the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences approved the study. Data were obtained through a secure online survey tool (LimeSurvey). Participants were asked to provide demographic information such as gender, age, and nationality, and to complete a battery of scales (which would take approximately 20 minutes to be completed). Also, participants were properly informed about the nature and objectives of the research, their The buffer role of psychological flexibility against the impact of major life events on depression symptoms Soraia Alfaro Falcão da Fonseca (e-mail: soraia94fonseca@hotmail.com) 2018 voluntary participation and the confidentiality and purpose of their data. Informed consent was obtained from all the participants before completing the research protocol.
Finally, the database was cleaned to exclude participants who were not Portuguese and participants who presented missing data. The final sample comprised 401 participants.

Data analyses
Descriptive and correlational analyses were performed using IBM SPSS (v.21; SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL) to examine the characteristics of the sample and the associations between number of major life events, the negative appraisal of major life events, psychological flexibility, depression symptoms and age. used to test the significance of the moderation paths, considering 5000 brootstrap samples and 95% confidence intervals (CI) (Kline, 2005).
Lastly, to better understand the relationship between the independent variables (number of major life events and its negative appraisal) and depression symptoms, two graphs were plotted with different levels of the moderatorlow, medium and high levels of psychological flexibility (CompACT). Given that there are no cut points for CompACT, in these two graphical representations, the three curves were plotted considering the following cut-point values of the moderator variable on the x axis: one standard deviation above the mean, the mean, and one standard deviation below the mean, as recommended by Cohen and colleagues (Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2003).

Preliminary analysis
Uni and multivariate normality was examined by the values of Skewness and Kurtosis. There was no severe violation of the normal distribution (Kline, 2005).

Correlation analysis
Means, standard deviations and correlations between the study variables are reported in Table 1. Results revealed that the number of major life events was negatively associated with psychological flexibility (CompACT) and age, but a positive and moderate correlation was found with depression symptoms (Dep). Positive appraisal of occurred major life events (positive appraisal) was negatively correlated with psychological flexibility and age, but positively with depression symptoms. The negative appraisal of occurred major life events correlated negatively with psychological flexibility and with age. Additionally, negative appraisal correlated positively and moderated with depression symptoms. A negative and strong association was found between psychological flexibility and depression symptoms, but no significant correlation was found with age. Finally, depression symptoms were negatively associated with age.
Correlations between the number of major life events, positive appraisal and negative appraisal of major life events were not calculated since these variables resulted from an inventory and are unrelated independent variables. 20 The buffer role of psychological flexibility against the impact of major life events on depression symptoms Soraia Alfaro Falcão da Fonseca (e-mail: soraia94fonseca@hotmail.com) 2018

Path analyses
To further understand the role of psychological flexibility on the relationship between major life events and depression symptoms, two moderator analyses were

The moderator effect of psychological flexibility in the association between the negative appraisal of major life events and depression symptoms (Moderation II)
A second path analysis was conducted to test whether psychological flexibility  Note. * p < 0.050; ** p < 0.010; *** p < 0.001. iii. The author's institutional affiliations at which the work was carried out, with a footnote for the author's present address if different from where the word was conducted; iv. Acknowledgements.

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