INTERNAL RESILIENCE STRATEGIES AMONG TRANS AND NON-BINARY ADOLESCENTS

Purpose: Transgender adolescents suffer from disproportionately high rates of mental health disorders. Minority stress theory posits that transgender individuals experience unique stressors that can lead to poor mental health outcomes, but that protective factors can buffer the pathways between minority stressors and adverse mental health outcomes. Protective factors include both external resources and individual assets. While some external resources (e.g. family support, access to gender affirming medical services, and school connectedness) have been identified as protective among transgender adolescents, fewer studies have focused on internal resilience strategies. We qualitatively explored the internal resilience strategies identified as protective against minority stress by a diverse sample of trans and non-binary adolescents. Methods: We recruited 28 trans and non-binary adolescents between the ages of 16 to 20 living in New York City and the SF Bay Area. Interviews were conducted in two phases. In Phase one, we conducted "lifeline interviews," inviting youth to visually depict their life histories along a timeline, displaying significant events in chronological order. At the end of the interview, we asked participants to take photos that corresponded to prompts about internal and external resources (e.g. "Take a photo that represents your personal strengths" or "Take a photo that represents a safe space for you.") In Phase two, participants returned with their photos, which were used to guide the second interview. All interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim, coded, and analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. Results: Participants described five themes related to internal resilience: 1) Gaining strength through enduring and surviving hardships (e.g. "Going through those tough trials really gave me the strength to carry on with my life and really pursue happiness"); 2) Self-acceptance and self-affirmation (e.g. "I've gone through phases when I severely disliked who I was and being in the body that I was in. So, loving myself was the best support I could've given myself"); 3) Learning how to handle discriminatory situations, either by standing up for oneself (e.g. "I will do me and if they have a problem with it, there's the door"), or by avoiding conflict; 4) Cognitive behavioral techniques, including future orientation, mindfulness, and externalizing/reframing problems ("I have to be conscious of the way that I think about things, bec