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

Abstract

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.

Impact of social support on the resilience of youth: mediating effects of coping styles

“…The inconsistency may result from the possibility that the coping styles of different populations are influenced by personal traits and diverse cultural environments ( 24 , 39 , 46 ). In studies of military groups, negative coping styles were commonly used because of the advocated culture that urged military personnel to operate proficiently in stressful environments ( 47 ).…”

Relationships between team characteristics and soldiers’ organizational commitment and well-being: the mediating role of psychological resilience

“…Psychological resilience is central to military preparedness as it plays an important role in dealing with physiological stressors; moreover, a soldier under psychological stress (i.e., a soldier who is unable to cope with psychological stressors) will not be able to carry out military operations well, however physiologically fit he or she may be ( Nindl et al, 2018 ). 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 ( Cao et al, 2023 ).…”

“…Psychological resilience is central to military preparedness as it plays an important role in dealing with physiological stressors; moreover, a soldier under psychological stress (i.e., a soldier who is unable to cope with psychological stressors) will not be able to carry out military operations well, however physiologically fit he or she may be (Nindl et al, 2018). 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 (Cao et al, 2023). Contemporary scholarly discourse, as elucidated by Okojie et al (2023), has advanced the understanding of employee resilience, reorienting the paradigm from a focus on intrinsic coping mechanisms in response to stress to a more contextual examination of resilience manifestation within daily occupational settings (Kuntz et al, 2016).…”

Deployment-related quarantining—a risk or resilience factor for German military service members? A prospective analysis during the third–fifth waves of COVID-19

“…As for specific military resilience factors during the COVID-19 pandemic, the few existent studies only based on US military service personnel showed that perceived unit cohesion, supportive leadership, and health-promoting leadership lessened the risk for reporting PTSD and anger, and clinically significant anxiety and depression ( 22 , 24 , 27 ), regardless of the personnel’s active response to the pandemic ( 22 ). Coping style and regulatory focus were identified as individual resilience factors for Chinese military officers during the COVID-19 pandemic ( 28 ). Identified risk factors for UK and US military veterans during the pandemic were higher levels of PTSD ( 29 ), a pre-existing mental health disorder ( 30 ), and medium or heavy combat exposure ( 29 ).…”