Behavioral activation is a brief, structured psychotherapy. It focuses on avoidance behaviors as well as activation of healthy behaviors, which together lead to the improvement in depression through increase in positive reinforcement. This study examined this mediation model in a community sample in Japan. The participants were 661 people (323 men and 338 women). Their average age was 36.98 years (SD = 12.91). Mediation analysis supported a partial mediation model and showed that activation and avoidance have direct effects on depression as well as indirect effects through positive reinforcement. The difference between the results of this study and those of the previous studies, which supported a complete mediation model, may occur because of characteristics of the community sample as distinct from previous studies’ undergraduate samples.
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