Mediating effect of psychological resilience in the relationship between cognitive emotion regulation and emotional well-being of medical students.

Objective: Medical students try to cope with challenging emotional experiences caused by stress factors specific to medical education during their education. In this process, students' cognitive emotion regulation (CER) strategies and psychological resilience (PR) act as protective mechanisms to alleviate the impact of challenging emotions. Therefore, it is important for medical students to use adaptive emotion regulation strategies and demonstrate psychological resilience in the face of challenging emotional experiences. This study aimed to reveal the effects of CER strategies and PR on the emotional well-being (EWB) of medical students and the mediating effect of PR in the relationship between CER strategies and EWB.

Methods: In this study, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to determine the mediating effect of PR in the relationship between CER strategies and EWB. The sample of the study consisted of 210 students who were randomly selected from the 1^st and 4^th year medical students and volunteered to participate in the study. Cognitive Emotion Regulation Scale, Psychological Resilience Scale and Emotional Well-Being Scale, which are the data collection tools of the study, were administered to the participants face-to-face by the researchers. Descriptive statistics and correlations were analyzed with SPSS 26. The SEM was analyzed with Jamovi 2.3.19 SEM module and R 4.1.1 Iavaan package.

Results: 54.8% (n=115) of the participants were 1^st-grade and 45.2% (n=95) were 4^th-grade students; 54.8% were male and 45.2% were female. The results of SEM analysis showed that the relationship between adaptive CER strategies in the two sub-scales (refocusing on plan; β=0.088, p=0.011 and positive reappraisal; β=0.175, p<0.001) and EWB was found to be mediated by the commitment sub-scale of PR.

Conclusion: This study showed that the relationship between positive reappraisal and refocusing on a plan, which are adaptive CER strategies, and EWB was mediated by PR-commitment. These results indicate that CER and PR stand out as concepts that support students' EWB in medical education.