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Resilience mediates the association between alexithymia and stress in Chinese medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic
BACKGROUND: Evidence indicates that medical students have had high rates of mental health problems, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, which could be affected by alexithymia—a marked dysfunction in emotional awareness, social attachment and interpersonal relationships—and stress. However, psyc...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BMJ Publishing Group
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9871866/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36711056 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/gpsych-2022-100926 |
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author | Zhang, Yuqun Wang, Tianyu Jin, Shengji Zhang, Heng Chen, Lixia Du, Shizheng |
author_facet | Zhang, Yuqun Wang, Tianyu Jin, Shengji Zhang, Heng Chen, Lixia Du, Shizheng |
author_sort | Zhang, Yuqun |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Evidence indicates that medical students have had high rates of mental health problems, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, which could be affected by alexithymia—a marked dysfunction in emotional awareness, social attachment and interpersonal relationships—and stress. However, psychological resilience might relieve alexithymia and stress levels. AIMS: This study aimed to investigate the role of resilience in alexithymia and stress in medical students. METHODS: A total of 470 medical students completed online and offline surveys, including the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20), the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and the College Student Stress Questionnaire (CSSQ). The data of five participants were excluded because of a lack of integrity. Mann-Whitney U test or Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare group differences in the CD-RISC scores among categorical variables. Spearman correlation analysis was employed to evaluate the associations between resilience and alexithymia and between resilience and stress. Mediation analysis was used to test the mediating effect of resilience between alexithymia and stress. RESULTS: Of the medical students considered in the analysis, 382 (81.28%) were female and 88 (18.72%) were male. There was a significant negative correlation between the TAS-20 scores and the total and subtotal CD-RISC scores (p<0.001). The CSSQ scores also significantly negatively correlated with the total and subtotal CD-RISC scores (p<0.001). Resilience mediated the relationship between alexithymia and stress (total effect=1.044 7, p<0.001). The indirect effect of alexithymia significantly impacted stress through resilience (effect=0.167 0, 95% CI: 0.069 to 0.281). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that resilience might effectively reduce alexithymia and stress. They also contributed to a better understanding of the mediating effects of resilience on alexithymia and stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. The evidence from these results encourages universities to focus on improving students’ resilience. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9871866 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-98718662023-01-24 Resilience mediates the association between alexithymia and stress in Chinese medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic Zhang, Yuqun Wang, Tianyu Jin, Shengji Zhang, Heng Chen, Lixia Du, Shizheng Gen Psychiatr Original Research BACKGROUND: Evidence indicates that medical students have had high rates of mental health problems, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, which could be affected by alexithymia—a marked dysfunction in emotional awareness, social attachment and interpersonal relationships—and stress. However, psychological resilience might relieve alexithymia and stress levels. AIMS: This study aimed to investigate the role of resilience in alexithymia and stress in medical students. METHODS: A total of 470 medical students completed online and offline surveys, including the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20), the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and the College Student Stress Questionnaire (CSSQ). The data of five participants were excluded because of a lack of integrity. Mann-Whitney U test or Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare group differences in the CD-RISC scores among categorical variables. Spearman correlation analysis was employed to evaluate the associations between resilience and alexithymia and between resilience and stress. Mediation analysis was used to test the mediating effect of resilience between alexithymia and stress. RESULTS: Of the medical students considered in the analysis, 382 (81.28%) were female and 88 (18.72%) were male. There was a significant negative correlation between the TAS-20 scores and the total and subtotal CD-RISC scores (p<0.001). The CSSQ scores also significantly negatively correlated with the total and subtotal CD-RISC scores (p<0.001). Resilience mediated the relationship between alexithymia and stress (total effect=1.044 7, p<0.001). The indirect effect of alexithymia significantly impacted stress through resilience (effect=0.167 0, 95% CI: 0.069 to 0.281). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that resilience might effectively reduce alexithymia and stress. They also contributed to a better understanding of the mediating effects of resilience on alexithymia and stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. The evidence from these results encourages universities to focus on improving students’ resilience. BMJ Publishing Group 2023-01-20 /pmc/articles/PMC9871866/ /pubmed/36711056 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/gpsych-2022-100926 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2023. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Original Research Zhang, Yuqun Wang, Tianyu Jin, Shengji Zhang, Heng Chen, Lixia Du, Shizheng Resilience mediates the association between alexithymia and stress in Chinese medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic |
title | Resilience mediates the association between alexithymia and stress in Chinese medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic |
title_full | Resilience mediates the association between alexithymia and stress in Chinese medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic |
title_fullStr | Resilience mediates the association between alexithymia and stress in Chinese medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic |
title_full_unstemmed | Resilience mediates the association between alexithymia and stress in Chinese medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic |
title_short | Resilience mediates the association between alexithymia and stress in Chinese medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic |
title_sort | resilience mediates the association between alexithymia and stress in chinese medical students during the covid-19 pandemic |
topic | Original Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9871866/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36711056 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/gpsych-2022-100926 |
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