Promoting resilience among institutionalized adolescents through fostering probabilistic orientation, forgiveness, and gratitude

Pages: 1551-1560
Kochakadan Joy Lijo (Department of Psychology, Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, Ernakulam, Kerala)
Narayanan Annalakshmi (Department of Psychology, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu)

The present study involved developing a positive psychological intervention program for fostering selected positive psychological strengths and examining its efficacy in improving resilience among institutionalized adolescents at risk for developmental adaptation using a pre-post-follow-up control group design. The sample included 45 institutional adolescents (Males=22, Females=23) in the experimental group and 45 (Males=22, Females=23) in the control group. The intervention focused on improving probabilistic orientation, gratitude, and forgiveness using different methods of delivery including conceptual teaching, storytelling, exercises and loving-kindness meditation. The intervention was delivered in nine sessions spread over eight weeks. Self-reported measures of probabilistic orientation, forgiveness, forgiveness likelihood, gratitude, and resilience were used to evaluate the efficacy of the intervention. Academic achievement, an objective measure obtained from the school records was also included to assess the efficacy of the intervention. ANCOVA, ANOVA, and Student’s t-test were used to analyze the data. The findings suggest that the evidence-based positive intervention had improved the probabilistic orientation, forgiveness, and gratitude of the institutionalized adolescents. Further, the intervention is found to have resulted in the enhancement of resilience, academic achievement, as well as the overall well-being of the participants. The findings confirm that enriching the inner protectors of the adolescents at-risk may be effective in enhancing their developmental adaptation and well-being thanks to the interaction between the protectors and the risk factors in the environment.