The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly altered the daily lives of many people across the globe, both through the direct interpersonal cost of the disease, and the governmental restrictions imposed to mitigate its spread and impact. The UK has been particularly affected and has one of the highest mortality rates in Europe. In this paper, we examine the impact of COVID-19 on psychological health and well-being in the UK during a period of ‘lockdown’ (15th–21st May 2020) and the specific role of Psychological Flexibility as a potential mitigating process. We observed clinically high levels of distress in our sample (N = 555). However, psychological flexibility was significantly and positively associated with greater wellbeing, and inversely related to anxiety, depression, and COVID-19-related distress. Avoidant coping behaviour was positively associated with all indices of distress and negatively associated with wellbeing, while engagement in approach coping only demonstrated weaker associations with outcomes of interest. No relationship between adherence to government guidelines and psychological flexibility was found. In planned regression models, psychological flexibility demonstrated incremental predictive validity for all distress and wellbeing outcomes (over and above both demographic characteristics and COVID-19-specific coping responses). Furthermore, psychological flexibility and COVID-19 outcomes were only part-mediated by coping responses to COVID-19, supporting the position that psychological flexibility can be understood as an overarching response style that is distinct from established conceptualisations of coping. We conclude that psychological flexibility represents a promising candidate process for understanding and predicting how an individual may be affected by, and cope with, both the acute and longer-term challenges of the pandemic.

Extant ACT process measures are typically circumscribed in their focus (limited to particular theoretical sub-processes or contexts of application) and have been subject to critique in terms of their discriminant validity and conflation of process and outcome variables. Conceptual questions therefore remain regarding how best to operationalize and measure core ACT processes. In this study, we describe the development of a new general measure of ACT processes (the CompACT) and explore the measure's factor structure, validity and reliability. In phase one, ACT experts rated the face and content validity of 106 items using a Delphi consensus methodology, and produced an initial 37-itemed measure. In phase two, a nonclinical sample of participants (N = 377) completed the CompACT and measures of other theoretically related and unrelated variables. An exploratory factor analysis suggested a theoretically-coherent three-factor structure (clustering ACT's six processes into three dyadic processes) for a 23-itemed version of the CompACT. The CompACT demonstrated good internal consistency, and converged and diverged in theory-consistent ways with other measured variables: higher levels of psychological inflexibility were associated with higher levels of distress and lower levels of health and wellbeing. The CompACT shows initial promise as a general measure of ACT processes.

Conflict of interest: Ian Tyndall declares that he has no conflict of interest. Daniel Waldeck declares that he has no conflict of interest. Robert Whelan declares that he has no conflict of interest. Bryan Roche declares that he has no conflict of interest. David Dawson declares that he has no conflict of interest. Luca Pancani declares that he has no conflict of interest.

There still exist a debate regarding the definition and etiology of SPPA as distinct from self-perceived sex addiction. As such, the research landscape is shaped by different theoretical perspectives. Without evidence to suggest one theoretical position as superior to another, clinicians might be at risk of recommending treatment that is in line with their theoretical perspective (or personal biases) but at odds with the motivations driving an individual to engage in particular sexual behaviors. In light of these findings, the review concludes with recommendations for future research.

This study examined implicit and explicit anxiety in individuals with epilepsy and psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNESs) and explored whether these constructs were related to experiential avoidance and seizure frequency. Based on recent psychological models of PNESs, it was hypothesized that nonepileptic seizures would be associated with implicit and explicit anxiety and experiential avoidance. Explicit anxiety was measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory; implicit anxiety was measured by an Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure; and experiential avoidance was measured with the Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire. Although both groups with epilepsy and PNESs scored similarly on implicit measures of anxiety, significant implicit-explicit anxiety discrepancies were only identified in patients with PNESs (p b .001). In the group with PNESs (but not in the group with epilepsy), explicit anxiety correlated with experiential avoidance (r = .63, p b .01) and frequency of seizures (r = .67, p b .01); implicit anxiety correlated with frequency of seizures only (r =.56,p b .01). Our findings demonstrate the role of implicit anxiety in PNESs and provide addi-tional support for the contribution of explicit anxiety and experiential avoidance to this disorder.

Researchers have proposed that the cognitive distortions of sexual offenders are underpinned by a number of implicit cognitive processes termed implicit theories. Until recently, however, the implicit theory hypothesis has received little empirical support due to broader limitations with standard forensic assessment procedures. The current research aimed to determine whether a new assessment methodology, the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), could provide further evidence for Ward and Keenan's (1999) children as sexual beings implicit theory. The results indicated that the IRAP was significantly more effective at identifying core implicit differences between sexual offenders against children and nonoffenders than a cognitive distortion questionnaire. Furthermore, although both groups demonstrated an overall response bias towards adults as sexual and children as nonsexual, this bias was significantly impaired in the sexual offender group. The findings are discussed in relation to previous implicit theory research and recommendations for the development of implicit methodologies are made.

The implications of the findings are discussed in relation to clinical practice, staff recruitment, and training.

Objective: This article systematically reviews studies of parental bonding in people with eating disorders. Method: MEDLINE, PsychINFO, EMBASE and CINAHL were searched to identify studies that compared parental bonding in people diagnosed with an eating disorder relative to non-clinical controls. Results: Twenty-four studies were identified. Women with eating disorders typically reported lower parental care and higher parental protection compared to non-clinical, but not psychiatric, controls.Interestingly, these relationships were mediated by avoidant problem solving style and several schemas from the Young Schema Questionnaire (YSQ 1 ). Discussion:While there are methodological limitations associated with the reviewed studies, they do offer some support for the proposal that difficulties in parent-child relationships predispose women to eating disorders and other psychiatric diagnoses. suggesting that difficult relationships between parents and children could be implicated in the onset of eating disorders. Using attachment theory 5 as an explanatory framework, it has been suggested that insecure attachments to caregivers are common in those with eating disorders. The symptoms of their eating disorder are assumed to represent an attempt to maintain physical and psychological proximity to a caregiver 6,7 . Likewise, psychodynamic theories suggest that parents of those who develop eating disorders are demanding/over-controlling and emotionally unresponsive. This is assumed to result in either; 1) a need for the adolescent to remain child-like to avoid abandonment, 2) a refusal to eat to subdue the internalised controlling parent, or 3) weight-control behaviours to maintain closeness to the parent 8,9 . Parental bonding and eating disorders 4It is important to assess the empirical support for the hypothesised link between early parent-child relationships and eating disorders. To date, four systematic literature reviews have sought to synthesise data on this empirical question 6,10,7,11 .Before considering their conclusions, it is important to note that they conceptualise existing empirical studies as either considering the "attachment construct" as defined by Bowlby 5,12 , or considering "parental bonding" as defined by Parker and colleagues 12 .Briefly, the "attachment construct" referred to in these reviews is defined by Bowlby's attachment theory 5 . This suggests that children respond to caregiver's behaviour in ways that most effectively achieve care and security.