A Novel Exploration of The Effect of Parental Divorce Early in Life on Stress-Coping Ability, Resilience and Mental Health in University Students

Parental divorce has been found to negatively affect children if appropriate support, attention and care are not invariably provided. Interestingly, increased resilience and stress-coping abilities have been found in children with divorced parents when encountering adverse events post-divorce. Starting university life represents a significant life change, which can cause stress and affects academic performance. To determine whether experiencing divorce before the age of 18 has an effect on mental health and wellbeing in university students, this novel study explores the resilience, stress-coping ability, personality, self-esteem and empathy, between two groups of students: those who did and those who did not experience parental divorce early in life. 102 undergraduate and postgraduate students completed the Brief Resilience Scale, Perceived Stress Scale, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Empathy-Quotient Cambridge Scale, and the Big Five Inventory-60. The results revealed no significant differences between respondents with married or divorced parents, suggesting that the experience of divorce does not impact on self-esteem, resilience and stress coping abilities. The results further indicated that the wellbeing of female and male participants is affected differently by divorce. Consequently adapted support has to be provided to children, depending on their gender.