Trauma-Informed Approach to Building College Students' Resilience

Resilience is a dynamic process of positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity. As colleges grapple with high rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide among students, many seek new ways to improve students’ resilience. This paper describes the development of a new psychoeducational universal prevention resilience program (https://strong.fsu.edu) designed to complement existing mental health services at a large public university. Serving a diverse population of 42,000 students, the new online program is designed to strengthen student coping skills, to inform students how trauma can affect mental and behavioral health, and to increase students’ connections to each other and to campus resources. It uses an iterative applied science approach grounded in the theory of resilience and stress research. It also adapts empirical information and data to a broader social work perspective in a manner responsive to trauma, media usage of Generation Z and young millennials, and the realities of campus environmental stressors.