The Association Between Perceived Psychosocial Supports and Resilience Among Female Venezuelan Refugees and Migrants

Abstract

Background: Migrants experience profound threats to their mental health, with women and girls facing additional vulnerabilities, like sexual exploitation and trafficking. Resilience acts in opposition to these threats, protecting against mental health decline through mental, emotional, and behavioural adaptations. A central component of resilience is perceived psychosocial support (PPS), which describes the provision of practical, material, and emotional assistance by others in order to mitigate the impacts of stressors on individuals. This study examines the association between PPS and resilience among displaced Venezuelan women and girls and hypothesizes they are positively correlated. Methods: This is a secondary analysis of a larger, qualitative/quantitative, cross-sectional study (2022) involving 9116 female Venezuelan migrants in Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru. Following the ‘sensemaking’ methodology, each participant shared a brief experience and completed a questionnaire that contextualized their shared experience and collected demographic data. Data from 5990 micro-narratives shared by women aged 14 or older were included in the analysis. Using SAS statistical software (SAS® 9.4 TS1M3), three quantitative analyses were performed: 1) descriptive statistical analysis, 2) bivariate analysis, and 3) multivariate logistic regression modelling (using backward elimination with a generous inclusion threshold of p<0.20). Results: Overall, 65% of participants were fully resilient. The final regression model included five of eight potential confounders: age, ethnicity, miscellaneous health issues, length of displacement, and relative wealth. Participants in the top tertile of PPS had 2.13 times the odds of resilience compared to the bottom tertile (95% CI: [1.84, 2.47], p<0.0001), while no significant difference was found between the bottom and middle tertiles (95% CI: [0.87, 1.14], p=0.91). Health issues, low relative wealth, and a longer time since displacement were associated with lower resilience, while age correlated with higher resilience. Finally, the relationship between ethnicity and resilience varied depending on the self-identified ethnic background. Conclusions: This study confirmed that PPS plays an important role in the resilience of forcibly displaced Venezuelan women and girls, and elucidated several unexpected results deserving of further investigation, such as the null association between resilience and self-identifying as LGBTQ+. Future studies should administer validated resilience questionnaires to better understand the contributions of the constituent components of resilience in this population. The results of this investigation can be used to more efficiently direct humanitarian mental health resources and develop tailored resilience-fostering interventions for this large, at-risk population.