Classification of Military Stress and Psychological Well-Being Among the Republic of Korea Army Officers and Noncommissioned Officers: A Latent Profile Analysis

Abstract

While combat trauma has widely been studied, the relationship between mental well-being and everyday military stress (MS) remains underexplored. To address this gap, this study aimed to identify distinct profiles of MS and psychological well-being (PWB) and examine their associations with psychosocial resources and health-related variables, using a sample of 500 Korean military personnel. The majority of the sample (58%) was characterized by high stress and average well-being, with 23% of the sample reporting low stress and high well-being and 18% of the sample reporting high stress and low well-being. Respondents with high stress and average well-being had more resources and better health than those with high stress and low well-being. These group differences are important for military practitioners and scholars to understand that high MS does not inevitably lead to poor mental health, and psychosocial resources can serve as resilience factors for mental well-being among Korean military personnel.