Resilience and Coping Intervention (RCI)

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RCI is a group coping exercise that is appropriate for children, adolescents, adults, and families. RCI encourages group members to share their thoughts and feelings about their experiences and to identify appropriate and successful coping strategies. It engages group members in dialogue about issues that are difficult to discuss and it is skill-enhancing. RCI sessions can focus on disasters, community trauma, or other challenges.

RCI may be completed in a single session or used as often as needed or desired to allow group members to revisit the coping strategies identified in previous sessions or to discuss new challenges group members may be facing in their daily lives. Repeating RCI sessions with the same group members reinforces lessons learned in earlier sessions and strengthens group member connections. RCI can be implemented in schools or in after-school, community, faith-based, or clinical programs and can be conducted by trained teachers, counselors, program staff, or volunteers.

  • Click HERE to download the Resilience and Coping Intervention Guide.
  • Click HERE to download the Resilience and Coping Intervention Guide for Schools.
  • Click HERE to download the Resilience and Coping Intervention Guide in Spanish.

Evaluation of the Resilience and Coping Intervention

Houston, J.B., First, J., Spialek, M.L., Sorenson, M.E., Mills-Sandoval, T., Lockett, M., First, N.L., Nitiéma, P., Allen, S.F., & Pfefferbaum, B. (2017). Randomized controlled trial of the resilience and coping intervention (RCI) with undergraduate university students. Journal of American College Health, 65, 1-9. doi: 10.1080/07448481.2016.1227826

Allen, S.F., Pfefferbaum, B., Nitiema, P., Pfefferbaum, R.L., Houston, J.B., McCarter III, G.S., & Gray, S.R. (2016). Resilience and coping intervention with children and adolescents in at-risk neighborhoods. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 21, 85-98. doi: 10.1080/15325024.2015.1072014

First, J., First, N.L., & Houston, J.B. (2017). Resilience and Coping Intervention (RCI): A group intervention to foster college student resilience. Journal of Social Work with Groups. doi:10.1080/01609513.2016.1272032