Background: Military personnel experience prolonged exposure to high-stress environments. Positive coping styles can assist in maintaining their mental and behavioral well-being, whereas negative coping styles cannot. Health behavior change theory specifies that an individual can transition from a negative to a positive coping style. The psychological resilience concept may prove vital in this transition. Methods: In a longitudinal study design, two questionnaires were administered to 233 military personnel twice, the first at T1 in April 2023 and the second at T2 in July 2023. The questionnaire measured individual negative coping style, positive coping style and psychological resilience. Results: The data showed that the negative coping style at T1 negatively predicted the level of psychological resilience at T2 (γ= - 0.26, p < 0.001) and the positive coping style at T2 (γ= - 0.16, p < 0.001). The level of psychological resilience at T1 positively predicted the positive coping style at T2 (γ= 0.22, p < 0.01). Psychological resilience played a mediating role between negative coping style and positive coping style. In addition, there was an interaction between psychological resilience and positive coping style in military personnel at the two time points. Conclusion: The negative coping styles that presently exist among military personnel have the potential to diminish their future positive coping styles by lowering their psychological resilience. This highlights the need to focus on the development and training of psychological resilience for military personnel, as it can effectively counteract negative coping styles and promote positive coping styles.

Background: This research analyses the relations between anxiety symptoms from the network perspective to deepen the understanding of anxiety in front-line medical staff during the COVID-19 pandemic and can also provide a reference for determining potential goals of clinical interventions. Methods: A convenience sampling was adopted, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale (GAD-7) was administered to front-line medical staff through online platforms. A regularized partial correlation network of anxiety was constructed and then we evaluated its accuracy and stability. The expected influence and predictability were used to describe the relative importance and the controllability, using community detection to explore community structure. The gender-based differences and the directed acyclic graph were implemented. Results: The connections between A1 “Feeling nervous, anxious or on edge” and A2 “Not being able to stop or control worrying”, A6 “Becoming easily annoyed or irritable” and A7 “Feeling afraid as if something awful might happen”, etc., were relatively strong; A2 “Not being able to stop or control worrying” and A3 “Worrying too much about different things” had the highest expected influence, and A2 “Not being able to stop or control worrying” had the highest predictability. The community detection identified two communities. The results of the gender network comparison showed the overall intensity of the anxiety network in women was higher than that in men; DAG indicated that A2 “Not being able to stop or control worrying” had the highest probabilistic priority; the lines from A2 “Not being able to stop or control worrying” to A1 “Feeling nervous, anxious or on edge” and A2 “Not being able to stop or control worrying” to A7 “Feeling afraid as if something awful might happen” represented the most important arrows. Conclusion: There exist broad interconnections among anxiety symptoms of front-line medical staff on the GAD-7. A2 “Not being able to stop or control worrying” might be the core symptom and a potential effective intervention target. It was possible to bring an optimal result for the entire GAD symptom network by interfering with A2 “Not being able to stop or control worrying”. GAD may have two “subsystems”. The modes of interconnection among anxiety may be consistent between genders.

Despite the growing application of the Dual-factor model of mental health (DFM), there is a paucity of research on military personnel. Additionally, existing cross-sectional studies indicate that resilience and perceived social support are associated with military mental health, but the lack of cross-lagged studies precludes researchers from making causal interpretations. This study aimed to explore the longitudinal relationship between resilience, perceived social support, negative dimension of mental health (depressive symptom), and positive dimension (life satisfaction) among military personnel using cross-lagged analysis. A total of 215 military personnel were investigated longitudinally over a 12-week, two-phase period. The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS), Patients’ Health Questionnaire Depression Scale-9 Item (PHQ-9), and Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) were employed to measure their resilience, perceived social support, depression symptoms, and life satisfaction, respectively. Pearson correlation analysis was used to examine the correlations between the aforementioned variables, and a paired t-test was employed to ascertain whether the variables changed over time. A cross-lagged panel analysis was employed to explore cross-lagged relationships between these variables in military personnel. All participants in this study were male. At Time 1, the mean age of all participants was 22.98 years (SD = 2.99), and the mean scores for the CD-RISC, PSSS, PHQ-9, and SWLS were 71.61 (SD = 14.86), 68.60 (SD = 10.22), 1.74 (SD = 2.89), and 28.08 (SD = 5.51), respectively. Cross-lagged analysis showed that prior resilience significantly predicted later depression symptoms (β = -0.19, p = 0.028) and life satisfaction (β = 0.17, p = 0.038). Prior perceived social support significantly predicted later life satisfaction (β = 0.15, p = 0.040) but not depression symptoms (β = -0.04, p = 0.652). Prior depression symptoms significantly predicted later life satisfaction (β = -0.26, p < 0.001), and prior life satisfaction also predicted later depression symptoms (β = -0.23, p = 0.002). The negative and positive dimensions of military mental health can interact with each other. Moreover, enhancing resilience and perceived social support may be a novel perspective for improving the mental health of military personnel.

The burgeoning field of research on the dual-factor model of mental health (DFM) has highlighted its significance, yet the applicability of the DFM in military personnel and its longitudinal relationships with different dimensions of meaning in life remains unclear. This study aimed to clarify the applicability of the DFM for military personnel and to investigate longitudinal relationships between the dual factors of mental health (negative factor, positive factor) and the two dimensions of meaning in life (presence of meaning, search for meaning) in military personnel. In this study, data were collected in two waves (April and August 2023) from 227 Chinese military personnel. We constructed a dual-factor model with depression as the negative factor and subjective well-being as the positive factor, and we compared it with a single-factor model to determine if DFM could be applied to military personnel. We also constructed a cross-lagged model to investigate longitudinal relationships between depression, subjective well-being, presence of meaning, and search for meaning. According to the findings, military personnel fit better with the DFM than with the single-factor model. Cross-lagged analysis results revealed that both the presence of meaning and the search for meaning negatively predicted depression and positively predicted subjective well-being. The DFM had good applicability among military personnel. Both the presence of meaning and the search for meaning could improve military mental health, suggesting that both dimensions of meaning in life may be potential targets for improving military mental health.

It will be helpful for older people to maintain good mental health by improving their marital satisfaction. The present study investigates how the elements of marital satisfaction among older couples are related to each other and reveal the key elements. Four hundred ninety-four older people participated in the study. Marital satisfaction was assessed by the 10-item marital satisfaction subscale of the ENRICH scale. Network analysis was adopted to estimate the network structure of these 10 items and the strength centrality of each item was calculated. The results showed that all edges in the final network were positive. Four edges with the strongest regularized partial correlations appeared between “ leisure activities and spending time together” and “ emotional expression”; “ personality and habits” and “ communication and understanding”; “ economic status and the manner of determining economic affairs” and “ relationship with relatives and friends”; and “ make decisions and resolve conflict” and “ emotional expression.” In addition, “ emotional expression” had the highest node strength value in the network. “ Communication and understanding” and “ views are consistent” had the second and third highest node strength values, respectively. “ Views are consistent” was more central in males than females and was the second central node in male networks. In conclusion, the present study offers a new perspective to deepen the understanding about the internal structure of marital satisfaction among older couples via network analysis. The results might provide potential targets of intervention for social workers or family therapists to greatly improve marital satisfaction among older couples.

Objective In this research, the influence of breviscapine on anxiety, fear elimination, and aggression and the potential mechanism was investigated.Methods Anxiety and locomotion were analyzed by elevated plus maze and open field test in mice. Bussey-Saksida Mouse Touch Screen Chambers were used to perform fear conditioning. Territorial aggression was assessed by resident intruder test. Protein levels were evaluated by Western blot. Breviscapine improved fear-extinction learning in BALB/cJ mice.Results Breviscapine at 20–100 mg/kg increased center cross number, total distance traveled, and velocity in a dose-dependent manner. On the other hand, breviscapine at 20–100 mg/kg decreased the immobility time in open field test. In addition, breviscapine at 20–100 mg/kg increased the ratio of time on the open arm, time on the distal parts of the open arm, and total distance traveled in elevated plus maze. Breviscapine at 100 mg/kg increased the average attack latency and decreased the number of attacks over the last 3 days of resident intruder test. In hippocampus, protein levels of postsynaptic density protein-95 and synaptophysin were elevated by breviscapine at these three doses.Conclusion The administration of breviscapine alleviates fear extinction, anxiety, and aggression, while increases locomotor in a dose-dependent manner, which might be associated with its influence on synaptic function.