Community Resiliency Model Training to Improve Mental Well-Being

Purpose: Emotion regulation skills afford better coping in the face of stress and trauma and therefore may improve resiliency. The Community Resiliency Model (CRM) is an easily-taught set of somatic mindfulness skills to increase resiliency in any population (Miller-Karas, 2015). The basic three CRM skills are tracking, resourcing, and grounding. These sensory-motor awareness skills serve to re-equilibrate the nervous system when persons are “bumped” out of their “Resiliency Zone” by excessive sympathetic or parasympathetic discharge. Symptoms which result from stress and trauma are seen as normal biologic responses and the CRM skills are also biologic, grounded in the body (van der Kolk, 2015). The impact of CRM training for diverse populations will be presented.

Methods: CRM trainings are 3-4 hours in length and consist of didactic instruction, demonstration, and practice. A pre-/post-test design is planned for 1) hospital nurses and 2) homeless or incarcerated women and youth. There will be a control group for the nurse intervention. Paired samples T-tests will be presented. Established measures of mental wellness are being used to examine response to the CRM intervention. Surveys on the acceptability and usefulness of CRM skills will be described. Use of the free CRM app, "ichill" by participants will be described.

Results:  Measures of anger, depression, and anxiety from incarcerated and homeless youth in response to the resiliency training will be presented. Preliminary results indicate reduced anger among incarcerated young women. Findings on well-being, resiliency, and secondary traumatic stress for the nurses will be presented. Heart rate variability as a measure of autonomic flexibility is being considered for future studies with first respnders in particular.

 Conclusion:  Resiliency training to withstand stress and trauma can be taught in a brief group formatfor diverse populations. The Community Resiliency Model is a simple set of mental wellness skills which nurses can incorporate into their toolkit. Nurses may use the skills for mental wellness self-care and share with family, friends, and patients.