Sex, Resilience and Psychological Well-Being in Mexican University Students.

Abstract

Mental health is currently highly relevant in society and one of the factors that could contribute to its improvement is psychological well-being, hence the importance of conducting studies that focus on analyzing variables that predict psychological well-being. Therefore, the goal of this research is to use models of structural equations to analyze the relationships among the variables of sex and resilience for psychological well-being. The total sample was 1190 Mexican university students, with an average age of 20.66 years (SD = 1.89). The results indicate that the resilience factors (strength and confidence, family support, and social support) are the variables with the greatest explanatory power on psychological well-being. It also highlights the mediating capacity of the strength and confidence factor between the other two resilience factors (family support, social support) and perceived psychological well-being. The implications of the study are that sex and two of the dimensions of resilience (family support and social support) show an indirect and positive effect on the perception of psychological well-being through the strength and confidence factor. Therefore, when implementing interventions to improve psychological well-being, these factors should be considered in order to have a greater positive impact on the population that is being studied. Future research should replicate these findings in larger samples.