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While experiencing childhood maltreatment (CM) increases the risk for negative lifetime outcomes, protective factors can lessen the harmful impact of stressful experiences and contribute to one's overall resilience. Musical engagement may operate as a protective factor by facilitating creative expression, increasing feelings of mastery, and providing a sense of belonging. It may also present stressors due to the unique demands of music performance (e.g., time constraints, competitiveness, scarce career opportunities). Due to the limited current research looking at musicians that have experienced trauma, we used a constructivist grounded theory approach to understand how the experience of engaging in music education and performance as children influenced resilience among adult survivors of CM. We invited thirteen students from prestigious music performance programs to participate based on their demonstrated resilience to perform at elite levels, despite reports of severe CM. Participants reflected on their experiences with CM, music education and performance, their identities as musicians, and the concept of resilience. Our analysis of interview transcripts supported the positive influence of social support, self-efficacy, and time and space away from their primary perpetrators of CM. Participants also consistently noted challenges present within organized music education, including ineffective instructors, pressure to perform well, and music used as a form of maltreatment which hindered their abilities to cope with CM. Implications based on key findings support making trauma-informed music instruction available equitably to all children and increased awareness among professionals of instructors' influence to facilitate or impede the coping process.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, and queer (LGBTQIQ) adults are more likely to report experiences of complex trauma, and have detrimental mental health effects as a result, when compared to cisgender, heterosexual adults. However, LGBTQIQ adults have excellent capacity for resilience. In this phenomenological investigation, I explored the lived experiences of resilient LGBTQIQ emerging adults (N = 11) who have histories of complex trauma. Five themes emerged as a result of this study, including (a) abuse and neglect, (b) emotional experiences during and after trauma, (c) connections are essential, (d) getting through hard times, and (e) struggles in the counseling process. The results indicated implications for counselors and counselor educators to better address the experiences of complex trauma and identify resilience in LGBTQIQ emerging adults. Recommendations are provided to counselors and counselor educators for integrating knowledge and actions into their counseling, teaching, and supervision practices, as well as for parents and caregivers, teachers and school personnel, and policymakers.

In an attempt to slow down the development of growing shopping centres and a decrease in sales in the smaller towns, the Danish government introduced a planning act in 1997 that included strict retail regulations. The regulations made sure that any retail development only took place inside the city centres, preventing the out-of-town establishments from continuing its quick development. In 2017 the regulations were removed at the same time as the planning responsibility was moved from the Ministry of the Environment to the Ministry of Business and Growth. This thesis aims to understand how the regulations have affected cities in Denmark, in a perspective of planning and urban development, but also how cities in Denmark reacted when they regained planning freedom after 20 years of regulations. Three cities of different sizes have been looked at, Nyborg, Elsinore and Aalborg, where planning and strategic documents published by the municipalities during and after the time period of retail regulations have been looked at. The collected material has then been analysed with the help of theories of resilience, central places and the thoughts of Jan Gehl, resulting in several key outcomes. During the time period of regulations the municipalities had little room to implement any bigger projects, but there could be seen a difference in attitude between the cities, where smaller cities accepted the situation and bigger cities more actively tried to go around the regulation as much as possible. The shift of restructuring the planning to the municipal level again in 2017 can be understood in a wider neo-liberal agenda from the government's side. On the smaller scale, which is the main focus of the thesis, a similar strategy could be seen over all three cases after the easement of regulation, where relief areas in the outskirts of cities have become the main focus area and are being prioritised in the retail planning. This has caused a collision though as the cities simultaneously promote an inside out strategy, to keep the retail concentration in the city centres. These strategies made by the cities goes against the presented theories on how to create a rich urban life and a lively city centre. There also lacks any discussion on how to create a resilient environment in the city centres, something that according to the literature is necessary in order to prevent the city centres from external shocks, and rising competition from e-trading and rising competition. The conclusion states that with no rethinking of strategies, the retailscape in Denmark will follow a path similar to the one observed in the beginning of the 90s, where bigger retail centres will outcompete smaller ones. Cities in Denmark will also need to incorporate a resilience based thinking in the future, in order to reach their intentions of keeping the city centres as the main retail area in the municipalities, or their own current strategies will be the reason for the decline of retail in the city centres.

This research explored how Arab American couples found the strength and resilience that empowered them to overcome the terrorist attacks of September 11th and the aftereffects that followed. Utilizing a family resiliency model grounded in systems theory and social constructionism, I interviewed 18 Arab American couples from the New York and New Jersey areas. I applied a phenomenological method of inquiry to gather the experiences of Arab American couples in order to understand the protective processes of resilience. Couples reported fear and caution because of incidents of threats and violence against Arabs in the United States. Some couples described incidents against them. Couples accessed a variety of resources to survive the aftereffect. These included coping skills developed during previous experiences of terror, American community support, determination, and religion. There were four major conclusions: resilient marriages, larger systems, process of identity, and religion: unify and identity. I discussed these conclusions in the context of the conceptual framework and made clinical and theoretical implications. / Ph. D.

Research on storytelling in counseling and psychotherapy with children has typically involved literary and metaphoric techniques that foster client change. There is limited research on the efficacy of telling one's personal life story as a counseling technique, especially in the school setting. The purpose of this study was two-fold: (l) to describe and implement a technique for school counselors to use in individual counseling sessions to foster resilience in children and, more specifically, (2) to explore the effectiveness of telling one's life story and creating a personal life book as a counseling technique to improve two characteristics of resilience -- internal locus of control and perceived coping resources. The research question that guided this study was: To what extent is telling one's life story and creating a life book an effective counseling technique for fostering resilience in children who have experienced loss? A sample of fifty children from two elementary schools (grades 4-6) who had experienced a significant loss were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) the experimental group who received the life book technique, (2) a control group of students who received other individual counseling, or (3) a control group who received no counseling at all. Two constructs of resilience in children were measured: (1) internal/external locus of control (Children's Nowicki-Strickland Internal-External Locus of Control Scale) and (2) perceived coping resources (Coping Resources Inventory Scales for Educational Enhancement). Pre-test/Posttest analyses of data following the six-week experimental period were conducted using ANOVA statistical procedures. Quantitative results indicated that, statistically, the life book technique was no more or no less effective in improving internal locus of control or coping resources than either other individual counseling techniques or no counseling at all. However, qualitative evaluation of the technique offered support for the effectiveness of the life book technique as indicated by the life book participants who experienced change in a positive direction on both instruments and the unanimous positive evaluations of the life book participants and participating counselors. Therefore, while the life book technique was not found to be statistically significant in fostering resilience, the positive implications of qualitative analysis warrant further research to explore the life book technique as a school counseling practice to foster positive client change. / Ed. D.

This research explores how midlife women found the strength and resilience that enabled them to rebound and grow as they negotiated significant life challenges in their marriage, and with their children, parents, careers, and health. Using a family resilience framework grounded in systems theory with a feminist perspective, the researcher conducted in-depth interviews with 18 diverse women between the ages of 40 and 60 years in different regions of the United States. The phenomenological method of inquiry allowed the researcher to gather the experiences of midlife women in order to understand the protective processes of resilience for overcoming adversity. Three research questions guided this study: (1) How have women dealt with an adverse experience or challenging transition in their adult married life and where did the strength or resilience they needed to rise above it come from? (2) How did they use their resilience in challenging situations? (3) How did this challenging experience influence their marriage and how was the experience affected by their marriage? Results suggest that the participants' core beliefs facilitated how they made meaning of their struggle and influenced their response to their challenges. The themes they discussed fell into beliefs that were organized as affiliative values, facilitative beliefs and transcendent spiritual beliefs. These belief systems described how they made sense of their challenges. Themes related to the importance of connectedness and relationships also occurred frequently in the narratives of these midlife women as they developed resilience. As expected, marriage was important to the majority of the women as they discussed the importance of emotional support, but their sense of well-being was also greatly influenced by other close relationships in their communities with friends, family, children, and role models. Work and education emerged as significant themes in the women's appraisal of their challenges, beliefs, and connectedness as they described their sense of resilience. Resilience was fostered when these women made connections between their past, present, and future and integrated their experiences, their beliefs, relationships, and resources. / Ph. D.

Resilience is one of the most important biopsychosocial concepts in contemporary social science. It may mediate the impact of adversity on family health, and be a potential location for intervention. There is a need for conceiving of the mechanisms within families that impact their health throughout the life cycle, including the investigation of how they handle illness. One framework that may assist in this is Walsh's family resilience framework. Previous attempts to create an empirical measure of this framework have serious issues with validity. The purpose of this study is to create a reliable and valid instrument that investigates Walsh's framework from the view of women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer. The study uses feminist theory to emphasize a pluralistic application of family systems theory in the understanding and promotion of the experience of women, the promotion of all families over one family type, and the concept of intersectionality. A non-experimental quantitative design is used to develop a reliable and valid instrument that investigates Walsh's framework. A pilot study addressed the creation and revision of the Family Resilience Assessment (FRA), and a main study tested the revised FRA for emergent factors and model fit. Results indicate excellent reliability and beginning content, construct, and convergent validity. Analyses produced a better fitting model that replaces three latent variables with one and correlates two of the nine framework indicators. These preliminary analyses demonstrate that the FRA may be a valuable instrument with replication with larger samples and further revisions needed. Results further indicate that Walsh's framework is a sound method for conceiving of and better understanding family resilience. The framework may also be one way to study the mediating impact of family resilience on family health. / Ph. D.

Adults may acquire a hearing impairment through natural aging processes (presbycusis), exposure to loud noises, illnesses (e.g., Meniere's disease), and hereditary factors. Because hearing loss affects basic communication processes, couples often have to adjust their ways of interacting when one spouse develops a hearing loss. Extant literature presents relevant information about couple relationships in later life, individual adaptation to a hearing loss, and couple relationships where one spouse has a hearing loss. The current study was conducted to explore couple resilience processes. The family resilience theoretical framework guided this study (Ganong & Coleman, 2002; Walsh, 1996), with an emphasis on meaning that couples give to their experiences. The interaction of belief systems was explored in connection with resilience processes and the development of couple relationships. Qualitative semi-structured interviews with couples was the main method of data collection. Couples were recruited through audiologists and through a snowball sampling method. At least one partner was 60 years of age or older. Audiograms were requested from audiologists, and couples completed a marital satisfaction scale. Themes describing meaning and resilience processes emerged from interviews with eight couples in which one spouse was hearing-impaired. Themes related to meaning included couples' acceptance of the hearing loss, and demonstrations of the beliefs and values regarding their loss such as optimism, humor, gratitude, and pleasure through hearing. Couples reported having confidence in their communication skills. They also said that models of resilience, assistive listening devices, and faith in God, helped them to adapt to hearing loss stressors. Couples demonstrated healthy spousal caregiving relationships during the interviews. A focus group with marriage and family therapists (MFTs) was conducted to obtain clinical interpretations of the themes that emerged from the couple interviews. Clinicians' responses focused on couple relationship dynamics, possible clinical situations with these couples, and the therapist/client relationship. Many couples facing the hearing impairment of one spouse are living resilient lives together. However, there are likely many that are struggling. Implications for audiologists and MFTs are shared. As professionals are informed about the often unspoken and unheard stories relating to hearing loss, they can then serve with greater knowledge, empathy, and hope. / Ph. D.

Food insecurity is associated with increased stress, symptoms of mental illness, and persistent health disparities. Women caregivers (referred to as mothers) may be at an increased risk because they often compensate for food shortages by reducing their own intake and make household food decisions. The current literature on the relationship between food security status and mental health in the U.S. lacks a clear framework for the relationship between these two phenomena. This dissertation describes three studies that aimed to explore the relationship between food security and mental health for mothers with low income in Virginia: (1) understanding differences in mental health outcomes by food security status (n=1,029), (2) a path analysis of a conceptual framework of the relationship (n=1,029), and (3) a thematic analysis of mothers' lived experiences with this relationship (n=29). An explanatory, sequential mixed methods design was employed with a cross-sectional survey informing semi-structured interviews. The survey (administered August-October 2021) was developed with previously validated measures of food security status, physical and mental health, symptoms of mental illness, behavioral food coping strategies, and social support. The interview guide was developed based on the findings of the survey and administered in May and June 2022. Collective findings of this series of studies suggested lower food security status was associated with negative mental health outcomes. However, there were no direct pathways from food security status to mental health outcomes. Social support and behavioral food coping strategies mediated the relationship between food security status and mental health outcomes. Mothers reported experiencing managing a variety of stressors associated with food insecurity. Mothers also indicated that stressors and coping strategies associated with managing food insecurity impacted their mental health. Future research should explore additional factors impacting household resiliency and strategies to reduce stigma associated with resource utilization. These findings can be built upon to develop screening tools and interventions to help improve food security and mental health status mothers with low income. / Doctor of Philosophy / Household food insecurity, where a household has insufficient access to safe, nutritious foods, is associated with a number of negative physical and mental health outcomes, including stress for members of the household. Food insecurity is not necessarily felt equally by all members of a household. Mothers may be at a greater risk because they often are responsible for household food decisions. Despite an association between food insecurity and mental health being discussed in the existing literature, there was little evidence to support how that relationship works and the other factors that may affect this relationship. This dissertation details three studies that were conducted to better understand the relationship between food security and mental health for Virginia mothers with low-income: (1) understand differences in mental health outcomes by food security status, (2) develop a framework for how factors are related in this relationship, and (3) explore mother's experiences with the relationship. A survey was developed and administered (August-October 2021) using previously tested measures of food security and mental health. The survey also included measures of factors that may have impacted the relationship, including physical health, social support, and behavioral food coping strategies, which are strategies used by people to stretch their available food resources. Interviews were conducted in May and June 2022. Findings suggest food security acts indirectly on mental health outcomes through social support and behavioral food coping strategies. Mothers reported managing multiple stressors associated with the experience of food insecurity that impacted their mental health. In the future, research should explore strategies to encourage resource utilization and identify ways to improve maternal mental health. Ultimately, interventions to improve food security and mental health for mothers with low income should be developed and implemented.