Adult Mental Well-Being during COVID-19: Resilience, Gratitude, and Cognitive Emotion Regulation as Predictors

Abstract

The Covid 19 pandemic has badly affected the mental wellbeing of individuals. So the current study was planned to explore the positive personal resources that may contribute to individual’s mental wellbeing. Therefore, the primary aim of the present study was to assess the association of resilience and gratitude with mental wellbeing in adults. A secondary aim was to assess the mediating role of two selected cognitive emotion regulation strategies in these associations. To approach the study objectives two cognitive emotion regulation strategies were assessed including refocus on planning and positive reappraisal. A sample comprising of 200 adults, ranging in age from 19-60 years (M age= 30.07, SD= 12.54) was accessed through an online survey. A convenient sampling strategy was used to approach the participants and to collect data. The Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (Tennant et al., 2007), Brief Resilience Scale (Smith et al., 2008), The Gratitude Questionnaire (McCullough, 2002) and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski & Kraaij, 2007) were used to assess mental wellbeing, resilience, gratitude and the cognitive emotion regulation respectively. To test the hypotheses, Pearson product moment correlation and multimediation analyses were analyzed. The results demonstrated that resilience and gratitude were positively correlated with the two cognitive emotion regulation strategies, refocus on planning and positive reappraisal, and both of these regulation strategies were also associated positively associated with mental wellbeing. Additionally, resilience and gratitude were also positively correlated with mental wellbeing. Moreover, the findings from multimediation analysis revealed that only positive reappraisal out of two emotion regulation strategies significantly mediated the gratitude-mental wellbeing link; and both emotion regulation strategies significantly mediated the resilience-mental wellbeing link. Limitations, implications and future directions of the current study were also discussed.