Influence And Intervention Of Social Support On Post-traumatic Stress Symptoms Among International Students Under Epidemic Situation

COVID-19,as a public health event of world concern,has a great impact on the mental health of the public,especially the increase of the prevalence of Post-Traumatic Stress Symptom(PTSS).As a special group,international Chinese students have more restrictions and obstacles in accessing social support and psychological service resources.It is an important issue to explore and pay attention to the characteristics,influencing factors and mechanism of post-traumatic stress symptoms of such groups,and then develop targeted psychological intervention.At present,more and more researchers have begun to pay attention to the effect of social support on post-traumatic stress symptoms.However,the mechanism and influencing factors between variables are still unclear.In addition,Acceptance and Commitment Therapy(ACT),the third generation of cognitive behavioral therapy,has shown unique advantages in relieving the symptoms of PTSS,but in China,there is no ACT self-help intervention practice for international students now.Therefore,this study intends to take international students as the research object,and firstly explore the prediction model of social support on post-traumatic stress symptoms,as well as the possible chain mediating role of resilience and psychological flexibility.On this basis,a self-help intervention manual based on acceptance and commitment therapy was developed to explore the effect of ACT self-help intervention on the resilience,psychological flexibility and post-traumatic stress symptoms of international students.In study 1,questionnaire method was used to explore the predictive effect of social support on post-traumatic stress symptoms and the possible chain mediating effect of resilience and psychological flexibility.A total of 301 students who studied abroad since the outbreak of COVID-19 were recruited through snowball sampling,and their social support,resilience,psychological flexibility and post-traumatic stress symptoms were evaluated.The mediation effect test was conducted using Bootstrap method.The results showed that the influence of social support on post-traumatic stress symptoms was composed of the following two indirect effects:(1)Social support could positively predict psychological flexibility and thus reduce post-traumatic stress symptoms;(2)Social support can positively predict resilience,then positively predict mental flexibility,and then negatively predict PTSS.Moreover,the direct effect of social support on post-traumatic stress symptoms was not significant.In study 2,a randomized controlled trial was used to study international students with symptoms of post-traumatic stress,set up ACT self-help intervention group and waiting group,and investigate the intervention effect and intervention satisfaction of one-week ACT self-help intervention with coaches on psychological flexibility,resilience and post-traumatic stress symptoms of international students.The results showed that:(1)compared with the waiting group,the ACT self-help intervention group had no significant effect on post-traumatic stress symptoms,psychological flexibility and resilience;(2)As for the change of symptoms in the intervention group,ACT self-help intervention could significantly reduce the symptoms of post-traumatic stress(d=1.09)and increase psychological flexibility(d=0.64),but had no significant effect on resilience.This study focuses on the influencing factors,mechanism of action and psychological intervention of post-traumatic stress symptoms of international students under the background of COVID-19,and develops a set of self-help intervention manual of ACT that can overcome time and space distance,which has certain theoretical significance and practical value.In the future,it is necessary to further improve and expand the intervention manual on this basis,in order to adapt to more intervention scenarios.