Background
According to experts, stress cuase a weak immune system and make people vulnerable to corona virus. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of Qigong exercises and resilience training on the perceived stress of male students due to COVID-19.
Methods
A semi-experimental design was conducted (pre-test and post-test) with two experimental and one control groups. 45 male students of Tabriz university who had higher scores on the Cohen Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-14) were selected by convenience sampling and randomly divided into two experimental groups (15 participants in each group) and one control group (15 participants). For the first group, resilience training (10 sessions; a week 2 sessions, one and a half hours) and for the second group, Qigong exercises (10 sessions; a week 2 sessions, 30 minutes) was applied and the control group did not receive any training. Prior and after the training, the subjects completed Cohen et al. (1983) Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-14). Univariate analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to analyze the data.
Results
The results showed that the mean scores of Perceived Stress due to COVID-19 reduced significantly in the resilience training group comparison to Qigong exercises group and in the Qigong exercises group comparison to the control group in the post-test (p < 0.05).
Conclusions
The results showed that resilience training is more effective in reducing perceived stress among male students due to Covid-19 disease than Qigong exercises.