Resilience, alexithymia, and university stress in relation to anxiety and problematic alcohol use among female university students

Abstract

Objectives: University students in Australia report higher levels of stress than nonstudents of the same age, with females reporting higher stress than males. The ability to successfully adapt to, and cope with, stressful situations and events, often referred to as resilience, requires social and interpersonal resources as well as the ability to effectively self-regulate emotions. When such resources and abilities are deficient, responses to university stress are likely to be maladaptive. Deficient emotional self-regulation is characteristic of individuals with the subclinical personality trait alexithymia, who also tend to suffer from social and interpersonal difficulties; thus students with alexithymia may be especially susceptible to university stress and associated adverse outcomes of low resilience. The present study examined resilience in relation to alexithymia, university stress, and two common outcomes of the latter in female university students: anxiety and problematic drinking. Method: Validated self-report measures of the relevant constructs were completed online by 136 female university students from two Australian universities. All participants indicated they had English-language proficiency and no history of serious head injury or diagnosed psychological disorder. Results: Serial mediation models indicated that resilience showed the predicted protective relationship to both problematic drinking and anxiety through lower levels of alexithymia and university stress. Conclusions: Findings suggest that students who lack resilience are more likely to report stress at university, as well as associated adverse outcomes such as anxiety and problematic drinking, due to deficiencies in emotional self-regulation and inadequate use of social and interpersonal resources for successful coping. K E Y W O R D Sanxiety, personality, stress, substance abuse and addiction

Resilience, Coping Strategies, and Stress Related to Online Diploma Exam in University Students in Poland

“…The results we obtained on the negative relationship between resilience and stress related to an online diploma exam in university students are consistent with previous findings on academic stress (Wilks, 2008;Lyvers et al, 2020), psychological distress (Bore et al, 2016;Bacchi & Licinio, 2017), as well as student stress related to COVID-19 (Lai et al, 2020;Quintiliani et al, 2021). Therefore, they confirm the importance of resilience as a characteristic that can facilitate the management of academic requirements, including the specific online examination situation caused by the pandemic.…”

“…Protective factors enable individuals to perceive stressors as less stressful and to deal with them more effectively. Previous studies showed negative correlations between resilience, academic stress (Wilks, 2008;Lyvers et al, 2020), and psychological stress in university students (Bore et al, 2016). Students with lower resilience reported significantly higher levels of psychological distress (Pidgeon et al, 2014).…”

Disguised Emotion in Alexithymia: Subjective Difficulties in Emotion Processing and Increased Empathic Distress

“…Alexithymia (from the Greek stems, a = lack, lexis = word, and thymos = emotion, literally “lack of words for emotion”) was coined by Sifneos ( 1 ) to denote a stable, dimensional psychological construct that includes difficulties in identifying, describing, and distinguishing emotions and an externally oriented thought style ( 2 , 3 ). Previous studies have shown that alexithymia exists on a continuum in the general population ( 4 ), and from 5 to 19% of the population has recently been found to have alexithymia ( 5 , 6 ). Individuals with a high degree of alexithymia are reported to have more dysfunction in coping with daily stressors and to be more vulnerable to mental illnesses ( 7 – 10 ).…”

Associations between Mental Resilience, Mood, Coping, Personality, and Hangover Severity

“…In contrast to previous findings [49,50], our data suggest that higher levels of mental resilience are associated with less hangover severity. A possible explanation for this association might relate to the association between higher levels of mental resilience and lower levels of stress and risky drinking behaviors [24]. The absence of risky drinking behaviors (e.g., binge drinking) could consequently result in lower hangover severity.…”

“…Mental resilience refers to the ability to recover or bounce back from stressful events [22,23]. High levels of mental resilience are associated with lower stress levels and lower hazardous drinking levels [24].…”