INDIVIDUAL AND PSYCHOSOCIAL FACTORS OF MENTAL HEALTH INDICATORS AMONG SLOVAK UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

• Authors: Orosová Oľga , Benka Jozef , Bavoľár Jozef
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The first aim of this study was to explore how much variance in the health indicators, emotional well-being (EWB) and depressive symptoms (M-BDI) can be explained by a set of individual and psychosocial factors: gender, social support, self-regulation, perceived stress and resilience. Secondly, this study aimed to explore the indirect effect of perceived stress on mental health indicators through the resilience among university students. The final aim was to test whether this indirect effect is moderated by social support, or, in other words, whether it depends on the level of social support. 237 students from four universities in Eastern Slovakia took part in this study (79.4% females, all aged 18 – 35, mean age 19.94, SD = 1.54). The collection of the data was part of the SLiCE (Student Life Cohort in Europe) research project. This study extends previous research - based knowledge regarding the relationship between perceived stress, resilience and mental health indicators by using a comprehensive model to predict health indicators as well as through the exploration of the indirect effect that perceived stress has on mental health indicators. These findings suggest that students with a higher level of stress perception and lower level of resilience as well as lower social support were exposed to the risk of depressive symptoms development. This supports the importance of resilience enhancing especially among students with lower levels of social support under stressful life conditions. This study contributes to the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of perceived stress and mental health by exploring the role of resilience and corroborates the importance of social support and resilience-based intervention. The main limitations of the present study were that all the data were obtained via self-report measures and through online data collection.

Keywords

EN

STRESS; RESILIENCE; SOCIAL SUPPORT; SELF-REGULATION; WELL-BEING; DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS; STUDENTS

• Publisher: Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Social Sciences
• Journal: Človek a spoločnosť. Internetový časopis pre pôvodné teoretické a výskumné štúdie z oblasti spoločenských vied
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 20
• Issue: 3
• Pages: -

Contributors

author

Orosová Oľga

• Department of Educational Psychology and Psychology of Health, Faculty of Arts, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Slovak Republic

author

Benka Jozef

author

Bavoľár Jozef