Psychological health: Exploring the relationships between psychological flexibility, basic psychological needs satisfaction, goal pursuits and resilience

The core constructs of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT, Hayes, Strosahl and Wilson, 2012) (including psychological flexibility) and Self-Determination Theory (SDT, Ryan and Deci, 2000) (including type of goal pursuits, basic psychological needs satisfaction and resilience) are contextual process-orientated components and there is research to support their affiliation with psychological health. These criteria are significant to counselling psychology’s objective to cultivate current knowledge on fostering psychological health according to its humanistic ethos as well as being relevant to psychology more broadly (Gelso and Fassinger, 1992; Gelso and Woodhouse, 2003; BPS, 2009). To date, minimal research has specifically investigated the relationships between the constructs of ACT and SDT and the current research aimed to address this by asking a community sample of 191 participants (m= 69, f= 122) to complete an online survey. It was hypothesised that psychological flexibility (AAQII-10 item version), basic psychological needs satisfaction (Basic Psychological Needs Scale), goal pursuits (AI), and resilience (CDRISC) would be positively associated with each other and outcomes of psychological health; fewer symptoms (GHQ-12), vitality (SVS) and life satisfaction (SWLS). Then, simple mediation analysis was used to test the hypothesis that basic psychological needs satisfaction, type of goal pursuits and resilience mediate the relationship between psychological flexibility and outcomes of psychological health. Overall, the research findings support the hypotheses, however, multi-collinearity between some of the constructs indicate that psychological flexibility and the SDT components are conceptually similar. The implications these findings have for further research are suggested and the limitations of the current research are highlighted