Predicting resilience among treatment-referred youth with a history of trauma exposure: an exploration of risk and protective factors.

While many children and adolescents experience negative outcomes following exposure to traumatic events, some demonstrate remarkable resilience. Understanding the factors that contribute to this positive adaptation is essential for developing effective interventions. Using secondary data from 199 treatment-referred youth (ages 5 to 18) with histories of maltreatment, refugee experiences, or military-related trauma, collected between 2016 and 2021 by the Metro Louisville’s Center for Promotion of Recovery and Resilience (CPRR) program, this study examined predictors of resilience in trauma-exposed youth and how resilience is conceptualized across different informant perspectives. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed distinct predictive patterns: for youth, personal strengths emerged as the strongest predictor of self-reported resilience (β = .79, p < .001), while for caregivers, both personal strengths (β = .40, p < .001) and behavioral problems (externalizing: β = -.24, p = .002; internalizing: β = -.26, p = .001) significantly predicted their ratings of youth resilience. Hispanic youth reported lower ix resilience than non-Hispanic youth (p = .003), and caregivers rated female youth as having higher resilience than male youth (p = .001). Significant informant discrepancies were observed, with caregivers rating youth resilience higher than youth self-reports (p = .017), while youth rated their strengths higher than caregivers did (p < .001). Theoretically grounded in Ungar's cultural view of resilience, this study addresses methodological gaps in resilience research by employing a multi-informant approach. The findings highlight resilience as a multidimensional construct that manifests differently across perspectives. Effective interventions should address both internal capabilities emphasized by youth and behavioral regulation emphasized by caregivers while considering developmental, cultural, and family factors that influence resilience processes in trauma-exposed youth.