Effect of the Psychological Resilience Education Program on Health Behaviors and Psychological Well-being among University Student

This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of the Psychological Resilience Training Program on health behaviors and psychological well-being among university students. In this true-experimental study with a pretest-posttest control-group design in a company with a follow-up stage, 60 university students were in experimental (30 students) and control (30 students) groups. Before and after training, they responded to the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile-II (Walker, Sechrist & Pender, 1995) and the Scales of Psychological Well-Being-Short Form (Ryff, 1989). The experimental group received 10 Psychological Resilience Training Program sessions (2 hours a session). The results statis- tical procedure of simple mixed ANOVA, indicated that the Psychological Resilience Training Program was effective in increasing or promoting health-oriented behaviors such as health responsibility, physical activity, nutrition, spiritual growth, interpersonal relations with others, and stress management. Also, this program was effective in the scales of psychological well-being such as independence, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. These findings suggest that the Psychological Resilience Training Program by reducing or eliminating maladaptive thinking patterns such as selective abstraction, overgeneralization, black-white thinking, person- alization, and the enrichment of interpersonal relationship skills could result in mental immunization among university students.