How Adolescents’ Resiliency Mitigates the Relation Between Household Dysfunction and Maladaptive Behavior

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction, impact adolescents’ externalizing and internalizing behaviors. However, personal and interpersonal resilience factors may buffer the effects of ACEs on adolescent psychopathology. The present study explored how specific resilience factors (i.e., personal well-being, family connectedness, and peer connectedness) prospectively buffered against the negative effects of household dysfunction on externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Household dysfunction was measured by assessing parental incarceration, substance use, mental illness, and marital status. Participants (52% female) included 176 adolescents with various racial and ethnic identities (White = 30%, Black = 23%, Hispanic/Latino = 35%, Multi-Racial = 9%, and 3% other racial/ethnic identities) aged 11-14 years old during the first wave of data collection and 12-15 years old during the second wave. Results indicated that household dysfunction served as a risk factor for adolescent externalizing behaviors at extremely low levels of family connectedness. Furthermore, this finding suggests that higher levels of family connectedness may be protective as these levels did not possess a significant association between household dysfunction and externalizing behaviors. However, peer connectedness and well-being were not shown to be protective against externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Per these results, prevention and intervention methods for adolescent externalizing behaviors may be most successful when focusing on improving connections within the family.Bachelor of Art