A Pragmatic, Pathway-Stratified Cluster-Randomized Waitlist-Controlled Trial of Three Variants of Resilience-Oriented Therapy in Rwanda

Resilience-Oriented Therapy (RoT) is a structured, trauma-informed, resilience-oriented group intervention developed for psychosocial recovery in post-genocide Rwanda. The intervention is organized around six broad phases: engagement and hope-building; psychoeducation about trauma, distress, and resilience; strengthening self-care and resilience practices; socioemotional skills acquisition; relational, socio-economic, and civic reintegration work; and follow-up or maintenance. Sessions were delivered by trained facilitators or mental-health practitioners.

The study used a pragmatic, pathway-stratified, cluster-randomized waitlist-controlled design. Participants were identified through a wider societal-healing screening process across five districts in Rwanda. Individuals with acute clinical risk were referred for appropriate clinical or hospital support. Remaining eligible adults were screened for intervention fit and routed to one of three RoT variants. The emotion-regulation variant (RoT-ER) targeted internalizing distress, including depression, anxiety, rumination, emotion dysregulation, and social withdrawal. The identity-development variant (RoT-ID) targeted alienation, shame, emptiness, identity disturbance, and belonging-related difficulties. The behavioural self-management variant (RoT-BSM) targeted aggression, alcohol or substance misuse, impulse regulation, and interpersonal responsibility.

Within each variant pathway, clusters were randomized to immediate RoT or waitlist control. Waitlist-control participants did not receive the assigned RoT variant during the baseline-to-endline evaluation period and were to be invited to participate after the evaluation exercise where feasible. The baseline cohort included 427 participants across 52 clusters: 173 in the RoT-ER pathway, 120 in the RoT-ID pathway, and 134 in the RoT-BSM pathway. Endline data were observed for 394 participants; missing endline records were handled in the manuscript analysis using multiple imputation.

The trial evaluated whether pathway-matched RoT improved clinical and psychosocial outcomes from baseline to immediate post-intervention endline. General outcomes included post-traumatic stress symptoms and resilience across all pathways. Variant-specific outcomes included depression and anxiety/cross-diagnostic symptoms in RoT-ER, borderline/identity disturbance symptoms in RoT-ID, and aggression, alcohol abuse/dependence, and drug abuse/dependence in RoT-BSM. Secondary outcomes included socioemotional difficulties, hopefulness/agency, forgiveness of others, stigma, social cohesion, perceived community threat, economic security, food insecurity, and food security.