Investigating the role of resilience in psychological vulnerability of Birjand Islamic Azad University employees in the pandemic COVID-19

Introduction: The emergence of COVID-19 and its consequences has led to fear, worry and anxiety among people around the world. Aim: The goal of this study was to investigate the role of resilience in predicting the psychological vulnerability of employees of the Birjand Islamic Azad University. Method: This study was descriptive and the community was the staff of Birjand Azad University in 2020. 123 person were randomly selected based on Morgan's table and the questionnaires included Connor and Davidson resilience and psychiatric symptoms. For data analysis, in addition to the mean and standard deviation, Pearson correlation test and multiple regression analysis were used and data analysis was performed using SPSS 21 statistical software. Results: The findings showed a significant relationship between the total resilience score and psychological vulnerability. Among the subscales, depression, hypersensitivity, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and aggression were the most correlated with resilience, respectively (P<0.001). Also, the results of linear regression analysis showed that resilience was able to predict a total of 40% of psychological vulnerability and its subscales (P<0.001). Conclusion: Therefore, it can be concluded that increasing resilience can lead to a decrease in the subscales of psychological vulnerability of individuals. The results of this study can also be used to diagnose the psychological damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in the staff of Birjand Azad University and to plan the necessary psychological interventions in this target group.