Zeynep SAĞIR, Hakan SARIYILDIZ
İnönü Üniversitesi Sağlık Hizmetleri Meslek Yüksek Okulu Dergisi - 2026;14(1):208-218
In today's world, maintaining spiritual and psychological well-being has become increasingly important. Identifying protective factors against psychological symptoms is therefore essential. This study examined, among university students living in a city severely affected by the February 6 earthquakes in Türkiye, the mediating role of difficulties in emotion regulation in the relationship between perceived stress and psychological symptoms, and the moderating role of spiritual well-being between emotion regulation difficulties and psychological symptoms. The research employed a quantitative, cross-sectional, relational survey design with 513 participants (212 males, 301 females) aged 17-62 years. Data were gathered through the Personal Information Form, the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-14), the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-Short Form (DERS-SF), the Three-Factor Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWBS), and the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). Analyses were conducted using SPSS 20.0. Normality assumptions were tested, and Pearson correlation analysis was applied to explore the direction and strength of relationships. Mediation and moderation analyses were performed with Hayes' PROCESS macro (version 4.2). Findings revealed a significant negative correlation between perceived stress and spiritual well-being (r(511) = -.41, p < .01). However, testing the main hypothesis (H7) using Model 14 showed that the interaction between spiritual well-being and difficulties in emotion regulation was not significant. This suggests that, although spiritual well-being is often described as a protective factor, its impact may operate more directly on psychological symptoms rather than moderating the link between emotion regulation difficulties and symptom levels.
