The Prediction of Mental Health by the Mechanisms of Immature Defense Style

This research aims to study the relation between defense mechanisms and the quality of life of the students studying at the universities of Tehran. For this purpose, a group of 428 students (including 202 male and 226 female one) is sampled by multistage random sampling method to answer the questions of the quality of life and defense mechanisms scales. The results show that there is a significant positive relation between mental health and the mechanisms of immature defense style including rationalization, projection, omnipotence, acting out, somatization, autistic fantasy, passive aggression, and displacement at the level of 0.001. No relation was found between mental health and other mechanisms. The results of the analysis of multivariate regression show that only projection, rationalization, and omnipotence are able to predict mental health, and other immature defense style mechanisms lack such predictability.