Giurcă, I. C., Cătană, A., Sassu, R., & Bucuță, M. D.
The coping, the hardiness, and the sense of coherence as maintaining factors for military personnel’s mental health
Numerous researches have been done regarding the impact of war exposure, which is seen as a major stress factor among veterans. However, only a few studies have investigated some protective factors that may prevent the onset of problems regarding the mental health of veterans after war exposure. This study examined the relationships between the personality characteristics (the hardiness and the coherence), the coping style, and mental health indicators (the level of perceived stress and anxiety levels) in the context of anticipating confrontation with a major stressful event, in order to determine if this (the hardiness, the coherence, the coping style, and mental health indicators) will have any effect on the higher levels of resilience on military service members deployed to Afghanistan. Data from 284 participants were analyzed. The participants were evaluated before attending international army operations. We proposed the following hypotheses: 1) the high levels of coherence and hardiness will be associated with effective management of major stress factors in the context of anticipatory stress; 2) the active coping which focused on stressors will be associated with lower levels of emotional distress. The present findings influence the development of innovative and efficient psychological interventions designed for army personnel.
Testing, Psychometrics, Methodology in Applied Psychology, 2017, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 349-361, DOI: 10.4473/TPM24.3.3
