Study on psychological resilience and its influencing factors of postgraduates who just entered the military medical university

Abstract

Objective To study military medical graduates' psychological elastic characteristics and the key influencing factors. Methods A comparative study of 817 graduate students and 597 undergraduate students in a military academy was conducted by using positive negative emotions, positive and negative cognitive bias and Mental Resilience Scale. Independent sample t-test, single factor analysis of variance, correlation analysis, and stepwise regression analysis were conducted by SPSS 18.0 for data analysis. Results ① Resilience scores of postgraduate students were significantly lower than those of undergraduate students (76.01 ± 11.43 vs. 80.00±10.26,t=-6.76,P<0.01). Resilience scores of military postgraduates were significantly higher than those of local postgraduates (77.18 ± 11.59 vs. 74.97 ±11.19,t=2.77,P<0.05). Resilience scores of female postgraduates were significantly lower than those of males (74.79±10.83 vs. 76.94±11.78,t=2.68,P<0.05), reflected in factors of tenacity and strength. ②Resilience and its factors were positively related to positive affect and attention to positive information (r=0.448~0.625,P<0.01), while negatively related to negative affect and attention to negative information (r=-0.206~-0.448,P<0.01). ③Regression analysis showed that positive and negative emotion, attention to positive and negative information can significantly predict resilience, accounting for the variance of 53.7%. ④Positive and negative affect partially mediated the relationship between attention to positive information and positive affect and resilience. Conclusion Attention to positive information and positive affect may be potential targets for intervention to enhance the level of resilience among military medical postgraduate students. Key words: Resilience; Positive and negative affect; Attention to positive and negative information; Mental health education