Psychological resilience refers to an adaption process alleviating psychological sequelae of stressor exposure, thereby encompassing positive adaption processes during or after stressor exposure. The present longitudinal study evaluates the outcomes of an 11-week blended resilience intervention providing three face-to-face lectures and eight subsequent online modules, which focus on enhancing the strategies and recourses taught. The training program is based on well-documented intervention strategies from psychotherapy research conferring resilience by enhancing evidenced resilience factors optimism and social support as well as self-care/ self-compassion, which have been found to confer mental health. At study entry, university students were assigned to either the invention arm (N=273) or no-treatment-control arm (N=315). The current study embodies continuous long-term monitoring of individual mental health and stressor exposure at baseline, postintervention and throughout the 12-months follow-up period. Beyond these measures, surveys on the trained resilience factors were included. Operationalizing resilience as an outcome, we assessed regression residuals as our primary outcome. Secondary outcome were the resilience factors. Our results indicate the intervention provides a long-term increase in psychological resilience. Further analyses are currently being conducted to investigate the different effects of our interventions. Our results are going to be discussed in the light of specific methodological factors of this study. Our preliminary findings indicate that our intervention promotes psychological resilience in university students. Implications on counseling methods and further resilience research are going to be discussed.
Contributors:
Prof. Dr. Michèle Wessa (principal investigator),
M. Sc. Eike Strömer,
Dipl.-Psych. Sandra Schönfelder,
M. Sc. Eliza Isabel Eckhardt,
M. Sc. Anna Katharina Bergmann,
Dipl.-Psych. Mila Domke-Wolf