The Effects of a School-based Resilience Intervention for Youth with Socioemotional Difficulties

Twenty percent of youth experience psychiatric illness before they reach adulthood, yet most do not receive adequate mental health services. Youth of color are particularly vulnerable to psychopathology considering they are more likely to experience adversity, stress, and barriers to treatment compared to White youth. Schools offer an ideal setting to address barriers to mental health care access and disparities affecting youth of color. The current study investigated the effectiveness of a school-based psychotherapy intervention for underserved youth. Participants were 141 children (ages 9–12 years; 37% Hispanic/Latinx, 58% Black/African American) assigned to either immediate or delayed intervention with the Resilience Builder Program ® (RBP), a resilience group intervention for youth with social competence and emotion regulation deficits. Repeated measures analysis of variance examined differences between immediate and delayed intervention groups. Immediate intervention participants demonstrated significant improvement across behavioral, social, emotional, and executive functioning domains compared to those in the delayed intervention group. After per-family Bonferroni correction, improvements in teacher-rated emotional self-control remained statistically significant. Examination of effect sizes indicated greatest improvement across parent- and teacher-reported emotional regulation. Findings suggest that RBP demonstrates potential as an effective resilience school-based intervention for youth, especially in the realm of emotion regulation. Results also offer encouragement for universal applications of RBP to classroom settings in the future. Highlights School-based interventions address barriers to mental health care access that disproportionately affect youth of color. This randomized controlled trial examined effectiveness of a school-based resilience intervention for underserved youth. The Resilience Builder Program ® is a group intervention targeting wide-ranging social competence deficits. Results demonstrated greatest improvements in domains of emotional regulation across parent and teacher report.