General mental health of seafarers' partners: Testing the role of personal resources and human-resource practices.

Abstract

The dual life of seafarers and their families is recognized as a unique life which may bring various sources of stress for seafarers' partners.The study focuses on the explanation of the mental health of seafarers' partners, by testing the role of different individual characteristics, and the organizational characteristics of their partners' job.The sample consisted of 539 women who declared themselves as seafarers' partners (age range: 18-60 years). The on-line survey consisted of questions, relating to demographic characteristics of the participants and characteristics of their partners' jobs, and a set of scales measuring general mental health, relationship satisfaction, stress coping strategies, perceived social support, and resilience.The results showed that, after controlling for demographic characteristics, significant contributions in the explanation of the mental health of seafarers' partners are made by the following measures: resilience, relationship satisfaction, perceived social support, and use of stress coping strategies (a lower level of dysfunctional coping strategies, and a higher level of emotion-focused strategies). In addition, a favourable ratio between working and non-working days on the part of their seafaring partners contributed to the explanation of their general mental health.The results obtained confirmed the role of personal resources and human-resource practices in the explanation of the mental health of seafarers' partners.