Fostering resilience by means of an online academic course: Exploring the mediating effects of self-esteem, body esteem and mental status

Universities are witnessing growing rates of emotional and mental challenges among students. Demand for emotional assistance—involving high-impact, cost-effective interventions to strengthen students’ resilience— is outstripping available resources. Accordingly, a new 13-module online course, titled “Favoring Resilience” was designed and taught to undergraduate students. The objectives of this study were to assess this course's feasibility and effectiveness, through a quasi-naturalistic control trial. A sample of 124 students who took this elective course during 2019–2020 was compared with a matching sample of 150 students who did not attend the course. Students were assessed four times: immediately before, immediately after, and three, and six months after the course completion, using the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD_RISK), Rosenberg Scale of Self-Esteem (RSE), Body Esteem Scale (BES), a standardized measure of emotional status (DASS-21), and the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire—4r (SATAQ-4r). The course was found to be both feasible and effective. Statistically significant differences were found between the respective improvements of the Intervention and the Comparison groups in all variables—with the Intervention group showing greater improvement, albeit with a small effect size. Improvement in resilience was mediated by self-esteem and emotional status, but not by body esteem. We conclude that in developing prevention programs for emerging adults, the focus should be both on increasing resilience directly, and on self-esteem and mental status as avenues for enhanced resilience.

Clinical trial registration number: NCT04129892