Browsing by Author "Pestana, Marlene Patrícia Baptista"
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- The Importance of Positive Factors in Protecting Adverse Mental Health Outcomes and Suicidal Behavior among Citizens of the Community of Portuguese Language CountriesPublication . Pestana, Marlene Patrícia Baptista; Pereira, Henrique MarquesThis dissertation is presented in a scientific article format, in which we aimed to assess the importance of social support, self-esteem and resilience in protecting and predicting mental health outcomes and suicidal behavior in a sample of 1006 citizens of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLC). When it comes to mental health, traditional research has been revolving around risk factors and their repercussions on mental health. On the other hand, understanding positive factors underlies prevention strategies of self-improvement of these skills and social and clinical interventions necessary to maintain good health and well-being. Social support, self-esteem and resilience have been the focus of several studies of this scope, having been associated with better mental health outcomes and lower suicidal behaviors. Our results showed statistically significant differences between the CPLC countries for social support, self-esteem, resilience, mental health, and suicidal behavior. The positive factors were negatively correlated with mental health and suicidal behavior. When added to sociodemographic variables, social support, self-esteem, and resilience are good predictors of both mental health and suicidal behavior. We concluded that, as previously shown in other studies, social support, self-esteem, and resilience all constitute protective factors for mental health and suicidal behaviors. Self-esteem took on an especially relevant role, possibly due to its moderating effect in positive life outcomes, less prevalence of psychological symptomatology and general mental wellbeing, since a strong sense of self-esteem is also linked to better locus of control and higher personal psychological resources to handle adversity.