La evitación experiencial como dimensión funcional de los trastornos de depresión, ansiedad y psicóticos

Lately the experiential avoidance (Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette, & Strosahl, 1996) has been proposed as an element shared by different psychiatric syndromes. Several studies have been conducted outside of Mexico with the aim to identify whether there is any relationship between experiential avoidance (EA) and other psychiatric disorders. Following this argument, the present study was conducted to identify differences in the levels of experiential avoidance among people who have a psychiatric diagnosis (anxiety, depression and psychotic disorder) and non-clinical population from the city of Mérida Yucatán. The Acceptance and Action Questionnaire II adapted for Yucatán population (Patrón, 2010) was applied to 108 participants. The sample was divided into four groups of 27 members depending on the diagnosis: (1) anxiety, (2) depression, (3) psychotic and (4) non-clinical. Statistical analysis was performed using simple variance test. The results suggest that there were significant differences between clinical and nonclinical groups and between the group with a diagnosis of psychotic disorder and groups with depression and anxiety disorder. These findings lead to study in more depth the role that the EA plays in the different types of schizophrenia, and to suggest possible techniques designed to influence the EA as part of the treatment of various disorders.