The association between family resilience and mental health: A three-level meta-analysis

Abstract

Family resilience refers to a family's ability to successfully cope with adversity from a system dynamics perspective, and is considered an effective resource for promoting individual mental health. However, there is a lack of meta-analyses examining the relationship between family resilience and mental health outcomes, nor the impact of different cultural context factors. The current study conducted a three-level meta-analysis of 48 studies published before January 25, 2022, from 5 scientific databases. The main effect test revealed a significant medium positive correlation between family resilience and positive mental health (r = 0.446, p < 0.001) and a significant medium negative correlation between family resilience and negative mental health (r = −0.543, p < 0.001). In addition, the moderator analyses for positive outcomes revealed significant effects for the average age (p = 0.048) and the type of adversity affected (p = 0.007). Meanwhile, the moderator analyses for negative outcomes found significant effects for individualism scores (p = 0.020). The findings suggest that family can be a valuable resource for individual psychological adaptation and growth. It is important to pay attention to the role of family members and cultural context factors in addressing the effect of family resilience on mental health.