Resiliency from violent victimization for people with mental disorders: An examination of multiple resiliency models
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02697580221141105 |
| Author | Michelle N Harris,Leah E Daigle |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02697580221141105
International Review of Victimology
2023, Vol. 29(3) 420 –448
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/02697580221141105
journals.sagepub.com/home/irv
Resiliency from violent
victimization for people
with mental disorders: An
examination of multiple
resiliency models
Michelle N Harris
The University of Texas at Dallas, USA
Leah E Daigle
Georgia State University, USA
Abstract
Research examining prevalence rates and risk factors related to victimization for people with
mental disorders has procured considerable attention. Despite this increased attention, why
a subset of this population is not victimized, despite elevated risk, is less understood. That is,
there is a group of people with mental disorders who are effectively resilient from victimization,
but the ways in which resiliency is produced is not known. Using the National Comorbidity
Study–Adolescent supplement data, the applicability of numerous resiliency models is examined
to identify and understand how the resiliency from victimization process operates for people with
mental disorders. Building off previous work, factors specific to mental illness are also included
in additional models to examine whether the same factors relate to resiliency for people with
mental illness as they do for other samples. Results indicate support for the compensatory and
protective-protective resilience models when mental health-specific factors are excluded from
the analyses. Results change, however, when mental health-specific variables are included in the
analyses, suggesting the need for continued research on resiliency for this population.
Keywords
Mental health, victimization, resiliency, prevention
Corresponding author:
Michelle Harris, Criminology and Criminal Justice Program, The University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell Road,
Richardson, TX 75080, USA.
Email: Michelle.Harris@utdallas.edu
1141105IRV0010.1177/02697580221141105International Review of VictimologyHarris and Daigle
research-article2022
Article
Harris and Daigle 421
In recent years, victimization has gained considerable attention in the mental health literature
(Goodman et al., 2001; Hiday et al., 2002; Monahan et al., 2017; Silver, 2002; Teasdale, 2009;
Teasdale et al., 2014). Because of this increased attention, researchers have established that people
with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators (Choe et al., 2008;
Latalova et al., 2014; Maniglio, 2009), are at greater risk for victimization experiences when com-
pared to the general population (Goodman et al., 2001; Hiday et al., 2002; Silver, 2002; Teplin et
al., 2005), and often have a host of risk factors that contribute to elevated victimization risk, many
of which are specific to this population and connected to symptoms of mental illness (Daquin and
Daigle, 2018; Goodman et al., 1997; Hiday et al., 2002; Johnson et al., 2016; Maniglio, 2009;
Silver et al., 2011; Teasdale, 2009; Teasdale et al., 2014). Despite this knowledge, there is little
understanding why some people with mental disorders are not victimized, despite elevated risk.
Considering that people with mental illness (including adolescents; (Turner et al., 2013) experi-
ence victimization at greater rates when compared to the general population, understanding mecha-
nisms that contribute to positive outcomes, like resilience from victimization, are important to
identify.
To that end, research on resiliency may be particularly useful to apply in understanding why a
subset of people with mental disorders is not victimized. Rather than understanding victimization
through the lens of identifying risk factors (which is important), resiliency research focuses on
examining strengths or protective factors that ameliorate the effects of exposure to significant
adversity or risk (Ayed et al., 2019; Fergus and Zimmerman, 2005; Leys et al., 2020; Luthar et al.,
2000; Masten, 2001, 2018; Rutter, 2012). That is, attention is shifted to understanding factors that
protect (or decrease) the risk of victimization experiences. Indeed, understanding the resiliency
process from victimization for this population would have significant implications for informing
policy and interventions. This importance is evident when considering that protective factors may
be more malleable than (often) static risk factors in prevention efforts, thereby potentially being
strong candidates to decrease victimization experiences for people with mental disorders.
Although some researchers have begun to incorporate protective factors into their investigation
of victimization for this population (Langeveld et al., 2018), there is a general lack of understand-
ing of how protective factors function in producing resiliency from victimization for people with
mental disorders. This omission is surprising considering that since the early 1990s scholars have
shifted the focus of resilience research away from just identifying protective factors to understand-
ing the process through which an individual overcomes adversities (Luthar et al., 1993). In doing
so, multiple models of resilience have been developed to understand the mechanisms that protect
people from risk and produce resilience (Masten and Obradović, 2006). Despite this development,
several models of resilience have been identified in the literature, but have yet to be tested in the
context of victimization for people with mental disorders. Importantly, these models help explain
how protective factors influence or alter the trajectory of risk exposure on a negative outcome
(Fergus and Zimmerman, 2005), rather than simply focusing on identifying protective factors. In
doing so, with a better understanding of how protective and risk factors operate in producing resil-
ient outcomes from victimization, interventions can be tailored to reflect such processes specific to
people with mental illness, aligning with the responsivity principle as outlined by Andrews et al.
(1990).
Considering this context, the present study aims to fill this void in a number of ways. First, data
from the National Comorbidity Study–Adolescent Supplement (NCS-A) are used to investigate the
applicability of numerous resiliency models to understand which model is best supported and to
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