The mediating role of cognitive emotion regulation in the relationship between object relationships and emotional distress tolerance in nursing students of Tehran University

Tolerance of emotional distress is one of the effective components in mental health and the study of factors affecting it, including object relationships and cognitive regulation of emotion is of particular importance. The aim of this study was to investigate the mediating role of cognitive emotion regulation in the relationship between object relationships and tolerance of emotional distress in nursing students of the University of Tehran.

The method of this research is correlational research based on structural equation modeling. The statistical population of this study consisted of all students of the first semester of the academic Faculty of Nursing, University of Tehran in year of 2019. In this study, 280 people were randomly selected to determine the sample according to the number of observed variables and assigning a coefficient of 20 to each variable and taking into account the possibility of incomplete questionnaires. Data collection tools included Object Relationships Scale, Cognitive Emotion Regulation Scale, and Emotional Distress Tolerance Scale. Data analysis tools were SPSS18 and AMOS-23.

The results showed that between the relationship between object and emotional distress tolerance (p <0.01, r =-0.36) and between maladaptive strategies of cognitive emotion regulation and emotional distress tolerance (p <0.01, r -0.39) There is also a significant relationship between adaptive strategies of cognitive emotion regulation and tolerance of emotional distress (p<0.01, r=0.36). The findings also confirmed the mediating role of emotional distress tolerance (p<0.01, B=0.60) in the relationship between object relationships and emotional distress tolerance.

The results of the present study confirmed the need to pay attention to object relationships and cognitive emotion regulation in predicting emotional distress tolerance in students. Therefore, teaching and strengthening object relationships and cognitive emotion regulation can be considered as an effective way to reduce students' emotional distress.