Our study aimed to answer the question: Can a resilience-based intervention improve the psychosocial and educational outcomes of students with psychosocial difficulties? We examined the effectiveness of a resilience-based group intervention, the Resilience Builder Program® (RBP), with students in low-SES school settings to determine if this treatment improves psychosocial and educational outcomes.
Enhancing resilience is valuable to youth from economically marginalized communities given that they often face greater challenges and hardships than their peers from more affluent communities. Efforts to increase resilience skills in these youth are hampered because they disproportionately encounter barriers in access to mental health interventions. Implementing school-based services may be optimal to address these inequalities. This project explores the effectiveness of a school-based group intervention (the Resilience Builder Program®) related to resilience and academic functioning in a sample of children from economically marginalized communities. Students (N = 169) with social-emotional difficulties were recruited from five elementary schools and randomly assigned to participate in the Resilience Builder Program® (RBP) immediately or following a semester delay. Participants, their parents, and teachers completed measures of resilience and academic functioning. Repeated-measures analysis of variance compares groups across time (pre-, post-intervention) on psychosocial and academic outcomes.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Enrollment
169
The Resilience Builder Program® group therapy will meet for one class period once a week during the semester (12 sessions). The group aims to improve resilience skills: areas such as the ability to control emotions and behavior, social skills and interactions with peers, problem-solving skills, ability to be flexible in different situations, self-esteem, and optimistic thinking. The groups involve the group leader presenting a new topic and skill, the students discussing this topic and developing strategies associated with the skill, the students practicing the skill while getting feedback from the group leader, and a period focused on self-control strategies. A letter reviewing each session will be sent home to the parent/guardian each week. Also, each child will be asked to do an assignment between weekly sessions to help him/her practice new skills.
Montgomery County Public Schools
Rockville, Maryland, United States
Resiliency scales for children and adolescent (RSCA)
self-report of child's resilience; score 0-100; higher scores = stronger resilience
Time frame: 1 month
Behavior assessment system for children, 2nd edition (BASC)
parent, child, and teacher report across varied psychosocial subscales; score 0-100; scores vary based on subscale, higher scores can indicate greater impairment or better functioning
Time frame: 1 month
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