Anxiety and Quality of Life in College Students with a Chronic Illness Compared to Those Without: The Mediational Roles of Experiential Avoidance and Committed Action

The presence of a chronic illness and the experience of anxiety are both factors that have been shown, separately, to negatively impact individuals’ self-reported quality of life (QoL). In an attempt to further understand the impact that a chronic illness places on experienced QoL, scholars have begun to propose that the constructs of experiential avoidance and committed action may potentially be implicated in this demonstrated association; however, this contention remains undetermined. This cross-sectional study examined the roles of experiential avoidance and committed action as potential mediators in the relationship between anxiety and QoL. It further compared the occurrence of these potential relationships in a sample of college-aged students with and without a self-reported chronic illness. A total of 547 participants recruited from university campuses resident in five Arab nations completed self-report assessments of anxious affect, QoL, experiential avoidance, and committed action. Analyses revealed a partial mediational relationship between anxiety and QoL that was almost entirely explained by experiential avoidance rather than committed action. This mediational effect, however, was only observed in the healthy cohort of students, not amongst those with a chronic illness. These results draw attention to the proposition that anxiety, a commonly occurring difficulty experienced by young adults, is associated with diminished QoL, but, moreover, that this relationship may be mediated by diminishing experiential avoidance and, potentially, greater engagement in committed actions. It further highlights that whilst anxious affect amongst students with a chronic illness appears more prevalent, compared to those without a chronic illness, there may be a number of other alternate factors that relate to their experienced QoL.