ARTICLE INFO

Article Type

Descriptive & Survey Study

Authors

Shakerifard   M. (1)
Mohamadzadeh Ebrahimi   A. (*2 )
Rahimi Pordanjani   T. (2)






(*2 ) Psychology Department, Humanities Sciences Faculty, University of Bojnord, Bojnord, Iran
(1) Counseling Department, Humanities Sciences Faculty, University of Bojnord, Bojnord, Iran
(2) Psychology Department, Humanities Sciences Faculty, University of Bojnord, Bojnord, Iran

Correspondence


Article History

Received:  November  10, 2018
Accepted:  January 16, 2019
ePublished:  June 20, 2019

BRIEF TEXT


[1]. ... [2]. … [3, 4]. Gratitude, as one of the newest constructs of the positive psychology approach, has attracted the attention of many researchers.

... [5-8]. Studies have shown that gratitude is associated with life satisfaction [11-19], happiness, quality of sleep and reduction of mental disorders [10], higher mental health [9], lower depression [11-13], sociable behavior [14], sense of cohesion [15], positive interpersonal performance [16], protection from illness and suffering financial stress [12] and greater well-being in adolescence and adulthood. In addition, experimental studies show that gratitude training significantly improves mental health [5, 18, 19]. ... [20]. Although the role of gratitude in mental health and other positive psychological functions has confirmed, the mechanisms that link gratitude to mental health are still unknown and have not been systematically investigated. According to Broaden-and-Build Theory, gratitude can lead to spreading and expanding positive emotions [21]. Studies have also shown that individuals experience higher levels of positive emotions, such as happiness, vitality, positive affection, and optimism and gratitude as a qualification, protects us from negative emotions, such as jealousy, anger and anxiety [6, 22, 23]. ... [24]. … [25]. ... [26]. It has indicated that the positive affect has a negative relationship and negative affect has a significant positive relationship with the dimensions of mental illness [27]. … [28]. … [29]. ... [30, 31].

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of gratitude on mental health with the mediating role of positive and negative affect.

The present research is a descriptive-correlational study through the structural equation model (SEM)

The statistical population included all students of medical sciences university of Sabzevar in the academic year of 2017-18

Stratified random sampling was used to select the sample. … [32, 33]. Given the number of variables in the present study, the minimum sample size should be 120 subjects. However, 250 questionnaires were distributed among participants to ensure validity and reliability of data as well as the possible fall, failure to respond, and outliers. Finally, after eliminating incomplete questionnaires and outliers, 242 individuals were studied.

Data were collected using the gratitude questionnaire-6 (GQ-6) [6, 34], the 28-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) [35-42], and the Positive and Negative Affective Scale (PANAS) [43, 44]. The obtained data were analyzed by SPSS 24 software. Pearson correlation test was used to examine the correlation between variables. The proposed SEM-based model fitness was evaluated using AMOS 24 software for maximum likelihood estimation. According to Bentler & Hu [45], the cutoff point to determine the fitness of different indices in SEM is as follows: 0CFI>0.95, TLI>0.95, X2/df=2-3, RMSEA<0.06, GFI>0.95, IFI>0.95 and NFI>0.95. Bootstrap method (5000 replicates or re-sampling) was used to evaluate the indirect paths of the model.

The mean age of participants was 21.30 ± 1.98 years. Of the 242 participants, 35.0% (87) were men and 64.0% (155) were women. Moreover, 67.4% (163 subjects) were single and 32.6% (79 subjects) were married. Of the participants, 42.1% (102 subjects) were in the paramedical faculty, 14.9% (36 subjects) were in the medical school, 22.3% (54 subjects) were in the faculty of nursing and midwifery, and 20.7% (50 subjects) were in the Faculty of Health. There was a significant correlation between all studied variables (p <0.01; Table 1). In evaluating the fitness indices, some of the parameters of the proposed model were not desirable and indicated that the model needs to be improved. Therefore, in order to improve the fitness indices, a covariance was established between the variables of positive affect and negative affect and the dimensions of physical symptoms and anxiety of the mental health variable. The second model the final model was resulted from recent modifications, which showed all the fit indices were better fitted to the final modified model (Table 2).According to the final model, the standard coefficients of direct paths of gratitude for positive affect, negative affect and mental health, as well as the standard coefficients of positive and negative affect path for mental health were all significant (p <0.05). It should be noted that the lower scores of the mental health questionnaire represented a higher mental health in individuals and vice versa (Figure 2).The indirect effect of gratitude on mental health through positive and negative affect was also significant and confirmed (p<0.05; Table 3).

The results showed that gratitude has a direct effect on increasing mental health. This result is in line with the findings of previous relevant studies [9-13, 17, 19]. In this regard, experimental studies have also shown that gratitude interventions are effective in enhancing mental health [5, 19, 46]. ... [47, 48]. The results also showed that gratitude indirectly enhances mental health by increasing positive affect and decreasing negative affect. Consistent with this finding, Lambert et al. [13] showed that gratitude through an increase in positive emotions and positive marketability indirectly had an effect on decreasing depressive symptoms. Other studies that have examined the direct and two-way relationship between gratitude, positive affect, negative affect, and mental health have shown that gratitude is associated with increased positive emotions and mental health. Chan's study on teachers, in line with the results of the present study, showed that gratitude has a positive relationship with mental health and positive affect, and has a negative significant relationship with negative affect [51]. In addition, in another study conducted on students, the results showed that gratitude training increases happiness and life satisfaction and decreases depression, stress and negative affect [52]. ... [53, 54].

It is suggested that the subject of this study be conducted on a larger sample size.

Since the present study is a cross-sectional study, acknowledging the relationships between variables cannot be conclusive.

Gratitude, directly and indirectly, by increasing the positive affect and decreasing the negative affect, is associated with higher mental health.

We would like to thank and thank all the students who participated in this research.

None declared.

This research has been approved by Ethics Code of 1311044.

This study was supported by authors.

TABLES and CHARTS

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