Abstract
The relationship between resilience and mental health was examined in three phases over 4 years in a sample of 314 college students in China. The present study aimed to gain insight into the reciprocal relationship of higher levels of resilience predicting lower levels of mental ill-being, and higher levels of positive mental health, and vice versa, and track changes in both resilience, mental ill-being and positive mental health over 4 years. We used the Depression Anxiety Stress, the Positive Mental Health, and the Resilience Scales. Results revealed that first-year students and senior year students experienced higher negative mental health levels and lower positive mental health levels than junior year students. Cross-lagged structural equation modeling analyses showed that resilience could significantly predict mental health status in the short term, namely within 1 year from junior to senior year. However, the predicting function of resilience for mental health is not significant in the long term, namely within 2 years from freshman to junior year. Additionally, the significant predicting function of individuals’ mental health for resilience is fully verified for both the short and long term. These results indicate that college mental health education and interventions could be tailored based on students’ year in college.
Highlights
Resilience refers to the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress (American Psychological Association, 2014)
As the present study is a repeated measure design, measurement invariance (MI) testing was performed to check if the constructs of the three scales were invariant over time
The present study is the first study to examine the bidirectional relationship between resilience and mental health status in three phases over 4 years using cross-lagged panel analysis in a college student sample
Summary
Resilience refers to the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress (American Psychological Association, 2014). Some studies have shown that resilience is negatively correlated with depression and anxiety (Miller and Chandler, 2002; Nrugham et al, 2010; Wells et al, 2012; Poole et al, 2017; Shapero et al, 2019). Skrove et al (2012) found that resilience characteristics are associated with lower anxiety and depression symptom levels. Poole et al (2017) pointed out that resilience independently predicted symptoms of depression and moderated the association between adverse childhood experiences and depression. Shapero et al (2019) determined that resilience significantly moderated the relationship between emotional reactivity and depressive symptoms. Building resilience may be one way of preventing adolescent depression
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