The development and evaluation of a resilience-focused therapy protocol for stress in everyday life : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand

Abstract

Psychological resilience is increasingly recognised as an important factor in helping individuals adapt to everyday stress, maintain psychological wellbeing, and reduce the risk of stress-related psychological difficulties. Although numerous resilience interventions have been developed, relatively few have been grounded in an explicit theoretical framework or examined how resilience develops over time within individuals. The present study sought to address these gaps through the development, evaluation and refinement of the Psychological Resilience Treatment Manual (PRTM), a modular cognitive-behavioural intervention based on the Three Psychological Resilience (3-PR) model proposed by de Terte and Stephens (2014). The details of this manual were derived from a critical review of the literature and the incorporation of empirically supported principles of behaviour change in clinical treatment. The study was conducted in two phases. Phase 1 utilised a single-case experimental design involving ten participants to evaluate the effectiveness of the PRTM in reducing perceived stress and psychological distress while enhancing wellbeing and adaptive coping. Participants completed measures of perceived stress, total stress symptoms, general wellbeing and coping across baseline, intervention and follow-up periods. Results indicated overall reductions in perceived stress and psychological distress, improvements in wellbeing and increases in adaptive coping following participation in the intervention. Phase 2 employed an intensive daily diary methodology with two participants to examine resilience development at an idiographic level. Daily diary entries, supplemented by quantitative measures, provided detailed insight into how resilience developed and was experienced within everyday life. Although both participants demonstrated improved outcomes following the intervention, the diary data revealed distinct pathways of change. One participant’s resilience development appeared to occur primarily through planning, organisation, active coping and problem-solving, whereas the other participant’s resilience development appeared to occur through emotional awareness, interpersonal reflection and experiential learning. These findings indicated that resilience may emerge through multiple pathways rather than through a single mechanism of change. The study contributes to the resilience literature in several ways. First, it provides support for the effectiveness of a theoretically grounded modular resilience intervention. Second, it offers clues as to how resilience develops within naturalistic contexts. Third, it demonstrates that individuals may engage with and benefit from the same intervention through different processes that reflect their existing strengths, coping styles, and ways of engaging with challenges. In doing so, the study provides idiographic insight into multiple pathways of resilience development and supports contemporary cognitive-behavioural, individualised and process-based perspectives that emphasise flexibility and individual differences in psychological change. Consequently, the study contributes ecologically valid, process-oriented evidence demonstrating how the same intervention may be experienced and utilised differently by different individuals, thereby providing a detailed idiographic account of how multiple pathways to resilience development unfold in everyday life.