Roots of Resilience: Transformations of Identity and Community in Indigenous Mental Health

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We propose to develop a cross-country interdisciplinary research program on factors and processes that promote resilience in mental health among indigenous peoples across the lifespan, with an emphasis on early childhood, school age children, adolescence and young adulthood. We will carry out a set of linked projects to identify the distinctive characteristics of individual and collective resilience among indigenous peoples in the three countries. This linkage of studies will occur in three ways: (1) developing a comprehensive model of resilience at individual, family, community and societal levels that can be applied across the three countries; (2) designing multi-method studies of the same population so that results can be triangulated for greater validity of interpretation of results; (3) using cross-national comparisons to examine potential social structural, cultural and historical differences in the processes of resilience. The projects will include clinical, community and population-based studies of resilience using both qualitative life history and ethnographic methods and quantitative analysis of epidemiological data. The collaborating investigators have developed specific methods for studies of resilience in different age groups, including: parenting and family environment during infancy and early childhood; school-based research on outcomes of performance and retention; community-based ethnographic research on individual life trajectories; social historical research on community responses to adversity; and population-based research on longitudinal datasets. Throughout these studies our emphasis will be on identifying what may be distinctive about the experience of indigenous peoples so that research on resilience can be appropriately interpreted and applied to improve the health of these populations.