The Undermining Effect: Environmental Changes Moderate Resilience Protection Against PTSD in Indigenous Communities

Background and Purpose: Indigenous communities along the Gulf Coast face disproportionate environmental challenges threatening their mental health and well-being. While psychological resilience is typically protective against mental health challenges, its effectiveness under varying environmental stress remains understudied. This community-engaged study, guided by the Indigenous Resilience & Wellbeing Framework, examines how ecological changes moderate the relationship between resilience and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) severity to inform tribal government adaptation planning.

Methods: Following protocols developed with the state-recognized tribe and approved by their governance council and five university Institutional Review Boards, the research team collected interviewer-administered surveys (n=122) among adult tribal citizens between May 2022 and August 2023. PTSD severity was assessed using the Short Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Rating Interview total scores as the dependent variable. Resilience was measured using the Brief Resilience Scale. Environmental Distress Scale assessed participants’ experiences with environmental issues like land sinking, incorrect coastal land rebuilding, visual air pollution (haze, smog, smoke), or coastal erosion. Two linear regression models examined main and interaction effects, with environmental changes mean-centered in the interaction term to reduce multicollinearity and enhance interpretability. Both models controlled for gender, age, and financial circumstances.

Results: The predominantly female sample (68.6%) included approximately half aged 55 or older (49.6%). Financial circumstances were divided, with 52.2% reporting they "couldn't make ends meet" or were "breaking even," while the remainder reported having extra money after expenses or feeling financially comfortable. The main effects model revealed a strong negative relationship between resilience and PTSD severity (B = -4.62, p < .001), suggesting resilience as a protective factor. The interaction model demonstrated a significant interaction between ecological changes and resilience (B = 1.961, p < .037), indicating that the environmental changes moderated the relationship between resilience and PTSD severity. Notably, the protective effect of resilience remained strong even when accounting for this interaction.

Conclusion and Implications: The findings reveal that while resilience generally protects against PTSD symptoms, this protection diminishes as environmental challenges increase. These findings suggest severe environmental changes may overwhelm psychological coping resources even among highly resilient individuals. These results add to the Social Work Grand Challenges call to create social responses to address environmental changes, stressing the importance of integrating mental health interventions alongside community adaptation planning. Future interventions should focus on building individual and community resilience while actively addressing environmental threats to Indigenous well-being. This dual approach aligns with Indigenous perspectives on the interconnectedness of ecological and psychological health. While these results have implications for several international sustainable development goals, this study is most related to the "Sustainable Cities and Communities" goal because the results will inform the tribal government's mitigation and adaptation strategies decisions. This paper will discuss the research partnership for community-led sustainability activities.