Resilience in Swedish Adolescents-Does Resilience Moderate the Relationship Between Trauma Experience and Trauma Symptoms?

Background: Research shows child abuse to be devastating for psychological health, but children and adolescents display varying reactions from maltreatment. Resilience is known as a protective factor, but sparse research is conducted on adolescents or assess resilience with consideration of ecological theories. Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire (ARQ) was developed to assess the five dimensions: Individual, Family, Peers, School, and Community and covers the broader ecological resilience spectrum. Objective: As resilience is a part of the human being survival system we wanted to investigate if resilience measured with ARQ, could moderate associations between experiences of trauma and trauma symptoms. Method: Six hundred fifty adolescents between 15 and 17 years old were asked to complete the Linkoping Youth Life Experience Scale (LYLES), the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC), and the Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire (ARQ). Result: The results showed that high scores on any dimension of the ARQ were negatively associated with trauma symptoms and that the dimension Peers moderated the effect of trauma symptoms on both interpersonal traumatic events and adverse childhood circumstances for males. The dimension Family moderated the effect of trauma symptoms on noninterpersonal traumatic events for females. Conclusion: Resilience seems to be an important factor when it comes to evaluating posttraumatic symptoms and that different resilience factors have different meanings for different types of traumas as well for boys and girls. Clinical Impact Statement Growing up is a challenge for many children, not least because more than 80% of students at the age of seventeen have experienced at least one victimizing/traumatizing event. This study is based on an ecological model (Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire, ARQ) that measures different resilience factors and examines their different capabilities to moderate the effect of trauma (Linkoping Youth Life Experience Scale, LYLES) on trauma symptoms (Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children, TSCC). Being aware of resilience factors are important when designing support and treatment for traumatized young people and more research on resilience will be important when developing treatment methods.