Experiential avoidance and mental health in university students: exploring novel indices for bridge communities and node links

Depressive, anxiety, and stress symptoms are prevalent among university students and associated with adverse outcomes, including suicide related behaviors. New insights about these associations could be obtained by exploring these phenomena along with transdiagnostic processes like experiential avoidance (EA). In a sample of 1.354 university students from two universities in Chile (M_age=19.28, SD_age=2.23; 69.4% females), we performed a psychometric network estimation, identified network communities, and computed traditional bridge centrality indices (strength and expected influence) to identify bridge symptoms. We additionally calculated internal and external community densities and introduced three novel bridge density (BD) indices to assess bridgeness at the community level. Traditional bridge indices showed that the most influential nodes were suicide ideation in the past 30 days, one node of perceived life stress (“How much stress do you currently experience from your academic achievements?”) and one node of EA (“It seems that most people lead their lives better than I do”). Bridge analysis and density metrics suggested low external connectivity for the EA community, which contradicts our hypothesis that EA would be a “bridge community”. However, the new indices revealed that EA had the highest bridge connectivity with the depression, stress, and subjective well-being communities. These findings highlight potential specific and transdiagnostic intervention targets, suggesting that EA functions as a relevant bridge community. The novel BD indices offer a valuable meso-level perspective, enriching the understanding connectedness among psychological domains.