Empowering transgender youths: Promoting resilience through a group training program

ABSTRACT

This study presents a training program developed with eight transgender youths who experienced transphobic episodes. Two focus groups were conducted and the 14-Item Resilience Scale was administered to evaluate training effectiveness in improving resilience. The intervention followed an empowerment, peer-group-based methodology. Three themes were identified: identity affirmation, self-acceptance, and group as support. A three-waves repeated measures ANOVA confirmed an increase in resilience levels. Suggestions for clinical practice and social policies are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Empowerment
• group-training program
• resilience
• transgender

Disclosure

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Daphne Programme of the European Commission (JUST/2011/DAP/AG/3059).