Date of Award

Summer 2026

Language

English

Embargo Period

7-6-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Psychology

Program

Clinical Psychology

First Advisor

Kristin Christodulu

Committee Members

Melissa Rinaldi, Sarah Domoff

Keywords

autism, autistic adult, resilience, trauma, well-being

Subject Categories

Clinical Psychology

Abstract

Autistic individuals, across the lifespan, face increased exposure to stressful, adverse, and potentially traumatic experiences. These experiences pose a negative impact on well-being and quality of life. Prevailing risk-based models are anchored in deficit-focused conceptualizations and provide limited insight into autistic individuals’ experiences afteradversity, highlighting the important shift towards strength-based models within resilience. Although resilience is a crucial topic to promote positive outcomes and well-being among autistic individuals, existing research is limited, lacks an integrated framework, and has not yet been investigated in the context of stressful, adverse, or potentially traumatic experiences, despite the deleterious effect these experiences pose on autistic individuals’ well-being and quality of life. In a sample of 175 autistic adults, the present cross-sectional study adopted the Resilience Portfolio Model (Grych et al., 2015), a strengths-based framework, to understand the protective factors that facilitate well-being and promote optimal outcomes among autistic individuals who have experienced adversity. Autistic adults completed measures evaluating different regulatory, meaning-making, and interpersonal strengths and resources, including emotion regulation, sense of purpose, autistic community connectedness, and interpersonal support, to assess the differential impact these components pose on key outcomes associated with resilience. Hierarchical regression analyses showed strong support for protective factors, combined, predicting increased resilience outcomes. Moderation analyses failed to show that protective factors attenuated the impact of life stressors on resilience. Findings provide important insights into specific protective factors that can be incorporated into future prevention and clinical interventions to support the resilience and well-being of autistic individuals who have experienced stressful, adverse, or potentially traumatic experiences.

License

This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.

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