Flourishing as resilience: Flourishing among Hispanic/Latino adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic disturbed the lives of adolescents during a well-established, sensitive period of development, and further disadvantaged communities already burdened with limited resources. Although there has consistently been discourse on human suffering during and since the COVID-19 pandemic, very little attention has been given to flourishing during this time of extraordinary adversity. Flourishing is a construct that describes a group of individuals who are concurrently reporting high or frequent hedonic (positive emotions) and eudaimonic (purpose, fulfilment) experiences. In the present study we modeled resilience as indexed by the association between early life adversity (ELA) and flourishing, as well as the mediating role of two indices of psychosocial resources (cumulative and compensatory) as a function of individual differences in the impact of COVID-19 in their lives. To do so, we used data collected from 223 predominantly Hispanic/Latino youth (age 11-18) assessed between April 2021 and April 2022 as part of a community-engaged partnership. Based on adolescent self-report on the Mental Health Continuum (MHC-SF), 36.3% of the sample met criteria for flourishing. Parallel moderated mediation showed that having more exposure to ELA was associated with a lower likelihood of flourishing (p < .001), and that this association was differentially explained by compensatory psychosocial resources depending on COVID-19 impact. Specifically, among adolescents experiencing high COVID-19 impact, ELA was associated with a lower likelihood of flourishing via lower compensatory psychosocial resources, indirect effect at high COVID-19 impact b = -0.01 (SE = 0.007), 95%CI[-0.03, -0.002]. These results underscore the importance of considering ELA and recent stress in conceptualizations of adolescent flourishing and demonstrate the potential advantages of identifying interventions that increase compensatory psychosocial resources among ELA-exposed youth.