The impact of resilience on the mental health of military personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic: coping styles and regulatory focus

Frontiers in Public Health

Public Health

Di Wu¹  Wei Xin²  Zhibing Yang³  Juan Li⁴  Fei Cao⁴ 

[1] Department of Medical Psychology, Air Force Medical University, Xi’an, China;Department of Medical Psychology, The Sixth Medical Center of PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China;Department of Military and Political Training, Army Academy of Armed Forces, Beng Bu, China;Department of Sociology, School of Law, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China;

关键词: military personnel;    mental health;    resilience;    coping style;    regulatory focus;    COVID-19;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpubh.2023.1240047

 received in 2023-06-14, accepted in 2023-07-27,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Military personnel encountered multiple stressful events during the COVID-19 lockdown. Reducing non-combat attrition due to mental disorders is crucial for military morale and combat effectiveness. Grounded in stress theory and regulatory focus theory, this study investigates the influence of resilience on military personnel’s mental health; coping style and regulatory focus are considered potential mediators and moderators, respectively. We conducted a routine psychological assessment on 1,110 military personnel in China. The results indicate that: (1) resilience has a negative impact on the psychological symptoms of military groups; (2) mature and mixed coping styles in military personnel mediate the association between resilience and psychological symptoms; and (3) regulatory focus predominance has a negative moderating effect on mature coping styles’ effects on psychological symptoms. Furthermore, this study supports previous findings that resilience and mental health are interrelated; it demonstrates that military personnel can effectively reduce negative psychological symptoms by improving their resilience level and adopting mature coping styles under stressful situations. The current study presents interventional insights regarding coping styles and mental health from a self-regulatory perspective during the COVID-19 pandemic.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Cao, Li, Xin, Yang and Wu.