Designing a Psychological Model of Family Resilience among Families Facing Economic Crisis, Chronic Illness, or Migration
Keywords:
Family resilience, Economic crisis, Chronic illness, Migration, Thematic analysis, Tehran familiesAbstract
Objective: This study aimed to design a psychological model of family resilience among families living in Tehran who were facing economic crisis, chronic illness in a family member, or migration-related family disruption.
Methods and Materials: This qualitative study was conducted using thematic analysis. The participants were 24 adult members of families residing in Tehran, selected through purposive sampling with maximum variation in type of crisis, gender, family role, marital status, and educational level. Data were collected exclusively through semi-structured interviews. Interviews continued until theoretical saturation was achieved; saturation occurred at the twenty-first interview, and three additional interviews were conducted to confirm the adequacy of the data. Data were analyzed using the six-phase thematic analysis procedure with the assistance of NVivo software. To enhance trustworthiness, member checking, peer coding, analytic memo writing, and audit trail documentation were used.
Findings: The analysis yielded five main categories: “reframing crisis and realistic hope,” “role flexibility and family reorganization,” “transparent communication and collective emotion regulation,” “mobilization of supportive resources and social capital,” and “preservation of continuity, family rituals, and shared identity.” The final model suggested that family resilience is not merely an individual trait but a dynamic, interactive, and context-sensitive family process shaped through shared meaning-making, role redistribution, emotional dialogue, external resource utilization, and preservation of family continuity.
Conclusion: The findings indicated that resilient families do not deny crisis; rather, they reconstruct it within a meaningful, manageable, and relationally cohesive framework. Therefore, family-centered psychological interventions in crisis contexts should move beyond individual symptom reduction and target meaning reconstruction, structural flexibility, communicative competence, social support activation, and strengthening of family rituals and shared identity.
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