Examining the Mediating Role of Psychological Resilience in the Relationship Between Religious Coping and Menopausal...

Background/Objectives: This study aimed to examine whether psychological resilience mediates the relationship between religious coping behaviors and menopausal symptoms among postmenopausal women. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Türkiye between July 2024 and July 2025 with women aged 45-60 years in the natural menopausal period (n = 190). Data were collected using a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Menopause Rating Scale (MRS), the Religious Coping Styles Scale (RCSS), and the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10). Descriptive statistics, Spearman correlation analysis, and structural equation modeling (SEM) with robust estimation were performed. The potential mediating role of psychological resilience was examined using SEM. Results: Negative religious coping was significantly associated with lower psychological resilience (β = -0.17, p = 0.050). However, psychological resilience did not show a significant association with menopausal symptoms in the structural model (β = -0.11, p = 0.134). Positive religious coping was not significantly related to resilience (β = -0.04, p = 0.649). The overall model explained a low proportion of variance in menopausal symptoms (R² ≈ 0.05). No evidence of a mediating effect of psychological resilience was found. Bootstrapped indirect effects indicated that the mediating role of psychological resilience was not statistically significant, as the confidence interval included zero. Conclusions: Although psychological resilience and religious coping were associated at the correlational level, no evidence of a mediating effect was found. The low explanatory power of the model suggests that menopausal symptoms are influenced by broader biological and contextual factors. The findings should be interpreted cautiously, and further longitudinal research is needed.