Are alexithymia and empathy predicting factors of the resilience of medical residents in France?

Abstract

ObjectivesTo explore resilience, resilience predicting factors and resilience distribution in French medical residents. MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in which general practice residents (n = 380) were asked to answer the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale. One hundred thirty-seven (137) responses were collected. The scores of the different scales have been calculated. The score differences were examined using the Student’s t-test or analysis of variance. The correlations were estimated using the Pearson correlation coefficient. The relationships between scores were analysed by multiple linear regression. The heterogeneity of the sample was examined by non-hierarchical cluster analysis. ResultsResilience and empathy were positively correlated (r(135) = .36, p< .001). Alexithymia was negatively correlated with resilience, r(135) = -.40,p<.001, and empathy, r(135) = -.38, p<.001. Resilience was influenced by alexithymia, b = -.284, p = .001, empathy, b= .255, p = .002, gender (female < male), b = -.231, p = .002 and year of formation, β= .157, p = .036. Two clusters of residents were characterized. They differed by their empathy and resilience profiles and by alexithymia trait. ConclusionsAlexithymia, empathy, gender and year of formation correspond to predicting factors of resilience. This suggests that the resilience of vulnerable residents can be enhanced by increasing their empathy and by reducing their alexithymia. Thus, teaching teams could sustain their students’ well-being through educational programs aiming to develop their understanding of their own emotions and those of their patients.

How to become more grateful? The mediating role of resilience between empathy and gratitude

“…Given that past studies suggest that the association among gratitude, empathy and resilience is complex and ambiguous, the present study aims to unpack these relations. For example, research has shown that empathy is a significant predictor of resilience and may represent an emotional skill that is necessary to support resilience (Mathad, Pradhan, & Rajesh, 2017;Morice-Ramat, Goronflot, & Guihard, 2018). In contrast, some researchers have found no significant correlations between empathy and resilience (Olson, Kemper, & Mahan, 2015).…”

Positive Impact of Mindfulness Meditation on Mental Health of Female Teachers during the COVID-19 Outbreak in Italy

“…Individual adaptive or non-adaptive responses to adverse events depend on a variety of biological, cultural, social and psychological components, which can be encompassed in the concept of psychological resilience [ 43 ]. Past research found that resilience is directly related, on the one hand, to secure attachment [ 44 , 45 ], mental health [ 46 , 47 ], psychological well-being [ 48 ], empathy [ 49 ], mindfulness [ 50 ] and interoceptive awareness [ 51 ], and, on the other hand, inversely related to childhood trauma [ 45 ], anxiety, depression [ 52 ] and burnout [ 53 ]. Many studies have shown the link between measures of resilience and personality traits, such as harm avoidance, self-directedness, persistence and neuroticism [ 45 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 ].…”

“…Objective 1 : to establish whether the two groups of teachers, who had two opposite profiles of resilience at baseline (obtained from teachers’ personality profiles before the MOM course), were different at baseline in the other measures employed in our study as well. Based on previous research on resilience [ 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 ], we hypothesized that the low-resilience group, compared to the high-resilience group, had worse baseline levels of psychological well-being, mindfulness skills, interoceptive awareness, emotional distress, empathy and burnout (H1).…”

Alexithymia, resilience, somatic sensations and their relationships with suicide ideation in drug naïve patients with first‐episode major depression: An exploratory study in the “real world” everyday clinical practice

“…Some studies have demonstrated that a reduced resilience may be related to mood/anxiety, traumatic symptoms, neuroticism and alexithymia in Functional Neurological Disorders (Davydov, 2017;Jalilianhasanpour et al, 2018). Moreover, alexithymia was negatively correlated with resilience and empathy in a sample of French medical residents (Morice-Ramat, Goronflot, & Guihard, 2018).…”