The Weaving Healthy Families Program: Promoting Indigenist Resilience and Transcendence

Background and Purpose: Quality of life matters for all people, yet Indigenous peoples experience a chronic overburden of mental health and wellness impairments, despite a trust relationship with U.S. federally recognized Indigenous Peoples to provide for wellness and health. Resilience in adults is linked strongly to better mental health outcomes, including lower levels of depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms (Campbell-Sills, Cohan, and Stein 2006; Luo et al. 2025). The purpose of this inquiry was to use the Indigenist framework of historical oppression and transcendence to assess whether the Weaving Healthy Families program promotes resilience and transcendence among U.S. Indigenous adults (n = 219) and youth (n = 347), ages 12 and older.

Methods: To evaluate the effectiveness of a culturally adapted intervention delivered by tribally based community health representatives (CHR)s, we used a longitudinal open-cohort stepped-wedge trial design (SWTD), situated within broader community-based participatory research (CBPR) to examine changes in life satisfaction, psychological resilience, family resilience, and perceived social and community support. Multilevel longitudinal modeling included the following results.

Results: Multilevel modeling indicated significant increases in family resilience (B = 0.45, p = .04) and in social, family, and community support (B = 0.13, p = .04) among adults in the study. Life satisfaction and psychological resilience improved through 6- and 9- months postintervention, respectively, yet did not reach statistical significance overall. Youth reported significant increases in life satisfaction (B = 0.34, p = .0003) and in psychological resilience (B = 0.57, p = .0001). Although family resilience and social support among youth did not reach statistical significance, both showed upward trends.

Conclusions and Implications: Given resilience has been found to be linked with better mental health and coping, such improvements indicated strong implications for improved wellness overall. Significant improvements in family resilience and perceived social, family, and community support among adults, and in life satisfaction and psychological resilience among youth, demonstrate the value of culturally grounded, community-based interventions. These findings corroborate with previous research indicating that resilience is a protective factor against mental health challenges, including depression, anxiety, and PTSD (Campbell-Sills, et al. 2006; Luo et al., 2025). Although gains were sustained for many participants, especially through 6- and 9-month postintervention timepoints, booster sessions with refresher courses may further sustain and extend initial postintervention gains.

References

Campbell-Sills, L., Cohan, S. L., & Stein, M. B. (2006). Relationship of resilience to personality, coping, and psychiatric symptoms in young adults. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(4), 585–599. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2005.05.001

Luo, S., Hu, J., Zhang, J., Mei, Z., Tang, Z., & Luo, S. (2025). The correlation between resilience and mental health of adolescents and young adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 16, Article 1536553. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1536553