Integrated Psychoeducational Resilience Intervention for Palestinian University Students: A Pilot Randomized Crossover Interventional Study

Description

Palestinian university students live and study under conditions of chronic, multidimensional stress arising from academic pressures, political instability, economic hardship, mobility restrictions, and persistent uncertainty about future opportunities. These stressors are compounded by intensive digital engagement associated with online and hybrid learning, which contributes to cognitive overload, attentional difficulties, disrupted sleep, and reduced academic efficiency. Collectively, these conditions place students at elevated risk of sustained psychological distress and functional impairment, even in the absence of diagnosable mental illness. This project proposes and evaluates an Integrated Psychoeducational Resilience Intervention specifically tailored to the lived realities of Palestinian university students. Rather than adopting a clinical or pathology-focused approach, the intervention is grounded in a trauma-informed, skills-based psychoeducational framework that conceptualizes resilience as a functional and multidimensional process. The program targets interrelated domains that are essential for academic persistence and wellbeing under adversity, including stress regulation, academic self-management, peer connectedness, and digital wellbeing. The study will be conducted as a pilot randomized crossover interventional trial over eight months. Eligible undergraduate students in their second to fifth academic years will be randomly assigned to either an early-intervention group or a delayed-intervention control group. During the first four months, the intervention group will receive the full program while the control group continues with usual academic activities. In the second phase, groups will switch conditions, ensuring ethical equity by allowing all participants access to the intervention while enabling both between-group and within-group analyses. Given the skills-acquisition nature of the program, the first phase will serve as the primary comparison period, and the second phase will be used to examine replication and sustainability of effects. The intervention is delivered over four sequential monthly modules. The first module provides trauma-informed psychoeducation and psychological first aid, focusing on normalization of stress responses, grounding techniques, and practical coping strategies. The second module addresses academic survival skills, including studying under chronic stress, managing concentration difficulties, and setting realistic short-term academic goals. The third module introduces structured peer support through brief, non-hierarchical check-ins designed to enhance motivation, accountability, and social connectedness without therapeutic processing. The final module targets digital stress and cognitive fatigue by promoting healthier technology use, notification management, screen-time regulation, and sleep hygiene. Outcomes will be assessed using validated self-report measures capturing perceived stress, academic functioning, psychological distress, peer support, digital stress, cognitive failures, and sleep quality. Assessments will be conducted at baseline, monthly during the intervention, and at the end of each study phase. Data analysis will emphasize feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness, with particular attention to changes in perceived stress and academic functioning, as well as the durability of intervention effects over time. By integrating psychological, academic, social, and digital dimensions within a low-intensity, scalable format, this project aims to provide empirically grounded evidence for a contextually sensitive resilience-building approach in higher education. The findings are expected to inform the development of sustainable student wellbeing initiatives in Palestinian universities and other high-adversity, resource-limited academic settings.