Promoting Resilience in Economically Disadvantaged Adolescents through School-Based Expressive Arts Groups

Since 2013, the majority of students served by the public school system in the United States have been considered “low-income” by the federal government. The stressors associated with low socioeconomic status significantly increase risk for social, emotional and behavioral challenges at all age levels, but can be particularly damaging to adolescents coping with heightened stress levels related to the intense multi-dimensional changes that define this developmental period. As the correlation between economic disadvantage and negative socioemotional and academic outcomes is increasingly evidenced, schools have begun to recognize their responsibility for providing preventative mental health care to high-risk students. Over the last decade therapeutic expressive arts programs have been implemented internationally within secondary schools to promote resilience in underprivileged adolescents. Arts-based modalities offer an opportunity to develop positive peer relationships, self-efficacy, creative problem solving skills, and coherent narratives of self in a format that increases accessibility and reduces stigma associated with mental health treatment. Although multiple examples of school-based resiliency groups utilizing single-modality arts therapies can be found in the literature, intermodal expressive arts therapy, the most recently established of the therapeutic arts disciplines, has yet to be examined in this context. Through analysis of established resiliencybased programs for high-risk adolescents within the modalities of visual art, drama, writing, music and dance/movement therapies, recommendations for the design and implementation of programming based specifically on the practices of intermodal expressive arts therapy are developed to guide necessary future research. PROMOTING ADOLESCENT RESILIENCE THROUGH EXPRESSIVE ARTS 3 Promoting Resilience in Economically Disadvantaged Adolescents through School-Based Expressive Arts Groups Introduction Based on data from the 2016 US Census, the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) calculated that 41% of children and adolescents in the United States live in families making less than twice the federal poverty limit annually, a tax-bracket defined as “low income” (NCCP, 2018). Youth from low-income families and communities have represented the majority of students served by the public school system since 2013 (Suitts, 2016), which has serious implications for the role and responsibility of public schools in student mental health care. Economically disadvantaged youth are far more likely than wealthier peers to exhibit the internalizing, externalizing (Devenish, Hooley & Mellor, 2017), and antisocial behaviors (Piotrowska, Stride, Croft, & Rowe, 2015) associated with insecure attachment (Reiss, 2013), chronic stress (Dubois, Felner, Meares, & Krier, 1994; Goodman, McEwen, Dolan, SchaferKalkhoff & Adler, 2005), developmental delays (Haig, 2014; Suitts, 2016; Vukojević et al., 2017), and exposure to complex trauma (Overstreet & Mathews, 2011; van der Kolk, 2005). These students are also far more likely belong to ethnic and racial minority groups, to have nonnative parents, and parents without a high school degree or steady employment (NCCP, 2018). The daily challenges experienced by this population can create significant barriers to lifelong