The Association Between Adult Attachment Patterns, Attachment to Group and Mental Health in Israel Following the October 7th Attack: The Role of Emotion Regulation Strategies

Yitshak Alfasi () and Avi Besser ()
Additional contact information
Yitshak Alfasi: Department of Behavioral Sciences, Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem 91010, Israel
Avi Besser: Department of Communication Disorders, Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem 91010, Israel

IJERPH, 2024, vol. 21, issue 11, 1-19

Abstract: We examined the associations between attachment anxiety, attachment avoidance, and attachment to group (to Israel) and mental health scores. The study used a community sample of 434 participants in response to the October 7th attack on Israel. Additionally, we explored the potential mechanisms linking these attachment patterns to mental health scores. We focused on emotion regulation strategies, such as task-focused, emotion-focused, and distance-focused strategies, as potential mediators. The results indicated that the negative direct association between attachment anxiety and mental health is fully mediated by a high emotion-focused strategy and a low task-focused strategy. Attachment avoidance did not have a significant direct association with mental health scores. However, it had significant negative indirect associations through a high emotion-focused strategy and a low task-focused strategy. Attachment to the group (to Israel) showed both direct and indirect positive associations with mental health through a low emotion-focused strategy and a high task-focused strategy. The discussion highlights the role of internal representations of insecure attachment, group attachment, and emotion regulation strategies (especially emotion- and task-focused strategies) in how highly stressful external situations affect mental health.

Keywords: adult attachment; attachment to group; emotion regulation strategies; mental health; October 7th attack (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/11/1443/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/11/1443/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:21:y:2024:i:11:p:1443-:d:1510531

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().