When do which psychosocial resources contribute to psychological resilience

This study aimed to validate parts of the Military Psychological Resilience Model of the Netherlands Armed Forces, containing 25 psychosocial resources for psychological resilience at five levels. The relative importance of psychosocial resources at each of the levels was examined in three different phases of the military career cycle using the Dutch Military Resilience Monitor. Data for the phases were collected from two groups of Army service members: the Army Support and Logistics Brigade (in-garrison phase, n=707) and the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (pre-deployment phase (n=245) and deployment phase (n=244)). The studies all included the same selection of resources from the model: emotional stability, optimism, and self-efficacy (individual level), family social support (home-front level), group cohesion and team efficacy (team level), transformational leadership (leader level), and organizational support (organizational level). Self-reported mental health was used as the outcome measure indicating resilience in all phases. Results showed that the individual resources significantly contributed to the prediction of mental health in all phases. The importance of the resources at the other levels varied over the three phases. In the in-garrison phase, the resources at each of the other levels contributed significantly to the prediction of mental health. In the pre-deployment phase, only the team resources did not contribute to the prediction, whereas in the deployment phase, the team resources were the only significant predictor next to the individual resources. These insights enable leaders to determine which resource(s) should be targeted to optimally support service members’ resilience in the different phases of their career.