Effectiveness of a universal resilience-focused intervention for children in the school setting: A randomized controlled trial

Background: Psychological resilience can be augmented through the acquisition of specific cognitive or emotional regulation skills, enabling children to adapt to or recover from stressful events, disadvantages, or adversities. We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a Tianchang Resilience-focused inTervention program (TRT1 program) on resilience and mental health conditions of Chinese children. Methods: This study was a two-arm cluster-randomized controlled trial, performed in Tianchang, a county in China. Students from 20 classes in a local primary school (aged 8.7-11.2 years) were randomly allocated to receive a resilience-focused intervention or waitlist group. The intervention comprised weekly 40-min sessions for 14 weeks and co-led by lay counsellors. Measures of emotional symptoms, behavioral difficulties, and resilience were collected at pre-, post-intervention, 6-months, and 12-months follow-up. Results: Between June 16, 2022, and September 4, 2022, 775 eligible students were recruited (mean age 9.93 years; 420 [54.2 %] boys). Relative to the waitlist group (N = 391), the intervention group (N = 384) reported a significant reduction in depressive and anxiety symptoms at post-intervention (all p < 0.001), 6-months (p = 0.007; p = 0.002) and 12-months follow-up (p = 0.018; p = 0.018), respectively. The intervention group effects were also observed on resilience at post-intervention follow-up (p = 0.006), and remained stable over 6-months (p < 0.001) and 12-months follow-up (p = 0.022). Conclusions: This study demonstrated that the TRT program, a universal resilience-focused intervention for children in the school setting, showed long-term effectiveness in improving resilience and mental health conditions. This minimally trained laypersons-delivered intervention might enhance the program's generalizability to other communities.