Psychological resilience
Encyclopedia
Resilience in psychology
refers to the idea of an individual's tendency to cope
with stress and adversity. This coping may result in the individual “bouncing back” to a previous state of normal functioning, or using the experience of exposure to adversity to produce a “steeling effect” and function better than expected (much like an inoculation gives one the capacity to cope well with future exposure to disease). Resilience is most commonly understood as a process, and not a trait of an individual.
Recently there has also been evidence that resilience can indicate a capacity to resist a sharp decline in functioning even though a person temporarily appears to get worse. A child, for example, may do poorly during critical life transitions (like entering junior high) but experience problems that are less severe than would be expected given the many risks the child faces.
There is also controversy about the indicators of good psychological and social development when resilience is studied across different cultures and contexts. The American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Resilience and Strength in Black Children and Adolescents, for example, notes that there may be special skills that these young people and families have that help them cope, including the ability to resist racial prejudice. People who cope may also show “hidden resilience” when they don’t conform with society’s expectations for how someone is supposed to behave (in some contexts, aggression may be required to cope, or less emotional engagement may be protective in situations of abuse).
In all these instances, resilience is best understood as a process. It is often mistakenly assumed to be a trait of the individual, an idea more typically referred to as “resiliency”. Most research now shows that resilience is the result of individuals being able to interact with their environments and the processes that either promote well-being or protect them against the overwhelming influence of risk factors. These processes can be individual coping strategies, or may be helped along by good families, schools, communities, and social policies that make resilience more likely to occur. In this sense "resilience" occurs when there are cumulative "protective factors". These factors are likely to play a more and more important role the greater the individual’s exposure to cumulative "risk factors". The phrase "risk and resilience"' in this area of study is quite common.
Commonly used terms, which are closely related within psychology, are "psychological resilience", "emotional resilience", "hardiness"
, "resourcefulness", and "mental toughness". The earlier focus on individual capacity which Anthony described as the “invulnerable child” has evolved into a more multilevel ecological perspective that builds on theory developed by Uri Bronfenbrenner (1979), and more recently discussed in the work of Michael Ungar (2004, 2008), Ann Masten (2001), and Michael Rutter (1987, 2008). The focus in research has shifted from "protective factors" toward protective "processes"; trying to understand how different factors are involved in both promoting well-being and protecting against risk.
when they encounter significant adversity,
trauma
, tragedy
, threat
s, or even significant sources of stress
. It is different from strengths or developmental assets which are a characteristic of an entire population, regardless of the level of adversity they face. Under adversity, assets function differently (a good school, or parental monitoring, for example, have a great deal more influence in the life of a child from a poorly resourced background than one from a wealthy home with other options for support, recreation, and self-esteem).
Resilience is a two-dimensional construct concerning the exposure of adversity and the positive adjustment outcomes of that adversity. This two-dimensional construct implies two judgments: one about a "positive adaptation" and the other about the significance of risk (or adversity). One point of view about adversity could define it as any risk
s associated with negative life conditions that are statistically related to adjustment difficulties, such as poverty, children of mothers with schizophrenia
, or experiences of disasters. Positive adaptation, on the other hand, is considered in a demonstration of manifested behaviour on social competence or success at meeting any particular tasks at a specific life stage, such as the absence of psychiatric distress after the September 11th terrorism attacks on the United States. Ungar argues that this standard definition of resilience could be problematic because it does not adequately account for cultural and contextual differences in how people in other systems express resilience. Through collaborative mixed methods research in eleven countries, Ungar and his colleagues at the Resilience Research Centre have shown that cultural and contextual factors exert a great deal of influence on the factors that affect resilience among a population of youth-at-risk.
Resilience has been shown to be more than just the capacity of individuals to cope well under adversity. Resilience is better understood as the opportunity and capacity of individuals to navigate their way to psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources that may sustain their well-being, and their opportunity and capacity individually and collectively to negotiate for these resources to be provided and experienced in culturally meaningful ways. Studies of demobilized child soldiers, high school drop-outs, urban poor, immigrant youth, and other populations at risk are showing these patterns. Among adults, these same themes emerge, as detailed in the work of Zautra, Hall and Murray (2010).
Garmezy and Streitman (1974) then created tools to look at systems that support development of resilience.
Emmy Werner
(1982) was one of the early scientists to use the term resilience in the 1970s. She studied a cohort of children from Kauai
, Hawaii. Kauai was quite poor and many of the children in the study grew up with alcoholic or mentally ill parents. Many of the parents were also out of work. Werner noted that of the children who grew up in these very bad situations, two-thirds exhibited destructive behaviors in their later teen years, such as chronic unemployment, substance abuse, and out-of-wedlock
births (in case of teenage girls). However one-third of these youngsters did not exhibit destructive behaviours. Werner called the latter group 'resilient'. Resilient children and their families had traits that made them different from non-resilient children and families.
Resilience emerged as a major theoretical and research topic from the studies of children of schizophrenic mothers in the 1980s. In Masten’s (1989) study, the results showed that children with a schizophrenic parent may not obtain comforting caregiving compared to children with healthy parents, and such situations had an impact on children’s development. However, some children of ill parents thrived well and were competent in academic achievement, and therefore led researchers to make efforts to understand such responses to adversity.
In the onset of the research on resilience, researchers have been devoted to discovering the protective factors that explain people’s adaptation to adverse conditions, such as maltreatment, catastrophic life events, or urban poverty. The focus of empirical work then has been shifted to understand the underlying protective processes. Researchers endeavor to uncover how some factors (e.g. family) may contribute to positive outcomes.
Resilience describes people who are expected to adapt successfully even though they experience risk factors that ‘stack the odds’ against them experiencing good development. Risk factors are related to poor or negative outcomes. For example, poverty, low socioeconomic status, and mothers with schizophrenia
are coupled with lower academic achievement and more emotional or behavioral problems. Risk factors may be cumulative, carrying additive and exponential risks when they co-occur. When these risk factors happen, according to a study conducted on children, resilient children are capable of resulting in no behavioural problems and developing well. Additionally, they are more active and socially responsive. These positive outcomes are attributed to some protective factors, such as good parenting or positive school experiences.
Resilience is also treated as an effective coping mechanism when people are under stress, such as divorce
. In this context, resilience is relevant with sustained competence exhibited by individuals who experience challenging conditions. Most research built on this perspective focuses on the children’s response to parents’ divorce in terms of gender. Boys show more conduct problems than do girls; girls obtain more support from mothers and are less exposed to family conflict than boys. Although divorce may have some negative impacts on children’s development, it may help children in single households to become more responsible than those in dual-parents households because of helping with chores. Some protective factors attributing to resilient children in single-family, for example, are adults caring for children during or after major stressors (e.g., divorce), or self-efficacy
for motivating endeavor at adaptation.
Finally, resilience can be viewed as the phenomenon of recovery from a prolonged or severe adversity, or from an immediate danger or stress. In this case, resilience is not related to vulnerability
. People who experience acute trauma, for example, may show extreme anxiety, sleep problems, and intrusive thoughts. Over time, these symptoms decrease and recovery is likely. This realm of research shows that age and the supportive qualities of the family influence the condition of recovery. The Buffalo Creek dam disaster
, for example, had longer effects on older children than on younger. Additionally, children with supportive families show fewer symptoms (e.g., dreams of personal death) than children from troubled families, as revealed by a study on victims of the 1976 Chowchilla
bus kidnapping.
. Additional factors are also associated with resilience, like the capacity to make realistic plans, having self-confidence
and a positive self image
, developing
communications skills
, and the capacity to manage strong feelings and impulses
.
Another protective factor is related to moderating the negative effects of environmental hazards or a stressful situation in order to direct vulnerable individuals to optimistic paths, such as external social support. More specifically, Werner (1995) distinguished three contexts for protective factors: (1) personal attributes, including outgoing, bright, and positive self-concept
s; (2) the family, such as having close bonds with at least one family member or an emotionally stable parent; and (3) the community, like receiving support or counsel from peers.
Besides the above distinction on resilience, research has also been devoted to discovering the individual differences in resilience. Self-esteem
, ego-control, and ego-resiliency are related to behavioral adaptation. For example, maltreated children who feel good about themselves may process risk situations differently by attributing different reasons to the environments they experience and, thereby, avoid producing negative internalized self-perceptions. Ego-control is "the threshold or operating characteristics of an individual with regard to the expression or containment" (Block & Block, 1980, p. 43) of their impulses, feelings, and desires. Ego-resilience refers to “dynamic capacity,……to modify his or her model level of ego-control, in either direction, as a function of the demand characteristics of the environmental context" (Block & Block, 1980, p. 48).
Maltreated children, who experienced some risk factors (e.g., single parenting, limited maternal education, or family unemployment), showed lower ego-resilience and intelligence than nonmaltreated children (Cicchetti et al., 1993). Furthermore, maltreated children are more likely than nonmaltreated children to demonstrate disruptive-aggressive, withdraw, and internalized behavior problems (Cicchetti et al., 1993). Finally, ego-resiliency, and positive self-esteem
were predictors of competent adaptation in the maltreated children (Cicchetti et al., 1993).
Demographic information (e.g., gender) and resources (e.g., social support) are also used to predict resilience. Examining people's adaptation after the 9/11 attacks (Bonanno, Galea Bucciarelli, & Vlahov, 2007) showed women were associated with less likelihood of resilience than men. Also, individuals who were less involved in affinity groups and organisations showed less resilience.
King, King, Fairbank, Keane, and Adams (1998) studied resilience in Vietnam War veterans and found social support to be a major factor contributing to resilience.
Schnurr, Lunney, and Sengupta (2004) found that several protective factors among those were the following factors protecting against the development of PTSD:
and the following factors protecting among the maintenance of PTSD
A number of other factors that promote resilience have been identified:
Certain aspects of religions/spirituality may, hypothetically, promote or hinder certain psychological virtues that increase resiliance. Research has not established connection between spirituality and resilience. According to the 4th edition of Psychology of Religion by Hood, et al., the "study of positive psychology is a relatively new development...there has not yet been much direct empirical research looking specifically at the association of religion and ordinary strengths and virtues". In a review of the literature on the relationship between religiosity/spirituality and PTSD, amongst the significant findings, about half of the studies showed a positive relationship and half showed a negative relationship between measures of religiosity/spirituality and resilience. The United States Army has received criticism for promoting spirituality in its new [Comprehensive Soldier Fitness] program as a way prevent PTSD, due to the lack of conclusive supporting data.
An emerging field in the study of resilience is the neurobiological basis of resilience to stress. For example, neuropeptide Y (NPY) and 5-Dehydroepiandrosterone (5-DHEA) are thought to limit the stress response by reducing sympathetic nervous system activation and protecting the brain from the potentially harmful effects of chronically elevated cortisol levels respectively. In addition, the relationship between social support and stress resilience is thought to be mediated by the oxytocin system's impact on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis
.
suggests "10 Ways to Build Resilience", which are:
(1) maintaining good relationship
s with close family members, friends and others;
(2) to avoid seeing crises
or stressful
events as unbearable problems;
(3) to accept circumstances that cannot be changed;
(4) to develop realistic goal
s and move towards them;
(5) to take decisive actions in adverse situations;
(6) to look for opportunities of self-discovery after a struggle with loss;
(7) developing self-confidence;
(8) to keep a long-term perspective
and consider the stressful event in a broader context;
(9) to maintain a hopeful outlook, expecting good things and visualizing
what is wished;
(10) to take care of one's mind
and body
, exercising
regularly, paying attention to one's own needs and feelings and engaging in relaxing activities
that one enjoys. Learning from the past and maintaining flexibility and balance in life are also cited.
The Young Foundation
's work on wellbeing in the UK emphasises 'subjective wellbeing', what people feel about the quality of their life
. A key element of this is 'resilience', how people bounce back from adversity. Their work includes:
Programme, the Abecedarian Early Intervention Project
, and social programs for youth with emotional or behavioral difficulties
One view is that resilience is a description of a group of children. It is not a trait or something that some children 'just have.' There is no such thing as an 'invulnerable child' who can overcome any obstacle that life throws at her (although some children may seem that way!). Resilience is not a rare and magical quality. In fact, it is quite common. Resilience is the product of a large number of developmental processes over time that has allowed children who experience some sort of risk to continue to develop competently (while other children have not). Research on 'protective factors' has helped developmental scientists to understand what matters most for resilient children. Protective factors are characteristics of children or situations that particularly help children in the context of risk. There are many different protective factors that are important for resilient children. Two that have emerged time and again in studies of resilient children are good cognitive functioning (like cognitive self-regulation and IQ) and positive relationships (especially with competent adults, like parents). Children who have protective factors in their lives tend to do better in some risky contexts when compared to children without protective factors in the same contexts. However, this is not a justification to expose any child to risk. Children do better when not exposed to high levels of risk or adversity.
A separate view is that certain children survive extremely high risk environments, such as a schizophrenic parent, through personal invulnerability -- a stubborn resistance to being drawn into a maelstrom of mental illness due to a profound attachment to reality:
When it comes to children, there are still many scientific debates with respect to resilience. One debate involves differing opinions about what constitutes 'doing okay.' There is considerable agreement that child competence can be defined and measured in a way that can indicate whether or not the child is doing well. Called 'age-salient developmental tasks,' these are things that are generally expected of children of a certain age, in a certain culture, of a certain time or point in history. Developmental tasks can span all areas or domains of a person's life. For example, in many cultures (but certainly not all) 14 month old children are expected to be able to show the beginnings of spoken language, early motor coordination that allows them to start walking, able to form an attachment relationship with a primary caregiver, etc. These tasks certainly change with age; generally children are expected to show increasingly sophisticated cognitive and social abilities as they grow older: 5 year olds are expected to show a higher degree of independence and self-regulation skills (for example), compared to a 2 year old. Resilient children can be thought of as those who show competence in age-salient developmental tasks even though they have experienced some risk or adversity that threatened that competence. Others have focused on different criteria for 'doing okay', such as the absence of mental health problems like depression or conduct problems. Still others have focused on happiness or the experience of positive emotions.
, self-esteem
, self-efficacy
, and autonomy
. Benard concluded that resilient children have high expectations, a meaning for life, goals, personal agency, and inter-personal problem-solving skills. All of these things work together to prevent the debilitating behaviors that are associated with learned helplessness
. Chess identified “adaptive distancing” as the psychological process whereby an individual can stand apart from distressed family members and friends in order to accomplish constructive goals and advance his or her psychological development. Moving away to college after high school is a way of practicing adaptive distancing. Classrooms in which students are given an opportunity to respond, an engaging cooperative learning environment, a participating role in setting goals, and a high expectation for student achievement. All of these characteristics help students develop a sense of belonging and involvement. These two characteristics help to reduce the feelings of alienation and disengagement. With that kind of connection in the school, students will have more of a protective shield against the adverse circumstances that life throws at them.
This pattern is likely the result of many protective processes that take place inside a religious institution. Ungar and his colleagues identified seven aspects of resilience across many different cultures. Each depends on the other. These seven aspects include:
For example, attending a church has been shown to increase a child’s social network, provide a feeling of cohesion and belonging in her community, even promote a sense of personal control and sense of social justice when threatened. It is this complexity and multilevel nature of resilience that explains how people use the internal and external resources (assets) that are both available and accessible to overcome adversity.
Examining the role positive emotion
plays in resilience, Ong et al. (2006) found that widows with high levels of resilience experience more positive (e.g., peaceful) and negative (e.g., anxious) emotions than those with low levels. The former group shows high emotional complexity which is the capacity to maintain the differentiation of positive and negative emotional states while underlying stress.
Ong et al. (2006) further suggest that the adaptive consequence of resilience is a function of an increase in emotional complexity while stress is present.
Moreover, high resilient widows showed the likelihood of controlling their positive emotional experiences to recover and bounce back from daily stress. Indeed, positive emotions were found to disrupt the experience of stress and help high resilient individuals to recover efficiently from daily stress (Fredrickson et al., 2003). In this case, some studies argue (e.g., Fredrickson et al., 2003; Tugade et al., 2004) that positive emotion helps resilient people to construct psychological resources that are necessary for coping successfully with significant catastrophe, such as the September 11th attacks. As a result, positive emotion experienced by resilient people functions as a protective factor to moderate the magnitude of adversity to individuals and assists them to cope well in the future (Tugade et al., 2004).
In addition to the above findings, a study (Fredrickson et al., 2003) further suggests that positive emotions are active elements within resilience.
By examining people’s emotional responses to the September 11th, Fredrickson et al. (2003) suggests that positive emotions are critical elements in resilience and as a mediator that buffer people from depression
after the crises. Moreover, high resilient people were more likely to notice positive meanings within the problems they faced (e.g., felt grateful to be alive), endured fewer depressive symptoms, and experienced more positive emotions than low resilient people after terrorism attacks (Fredrickson et al., 2003). Similar results were obtained in another study regarding the effects of 911 attacks on resilient individuals’ healthy adjustment (Bonanno et al., 2007).
People with high levels of resilience are likely to show low levels of depression, and less likely to smoke cigarettes or use marijuana (Bonanno et al., 2007). Moreover, low resilient people exhibit the difficulties of regulating negative emotions and demonstrate sensitive reaction to daily stressful life events (e.g., the loss of loved one) (Ong et al., 2006). They are likely to believe that there is no end for the unpleasant experience of daily stressors and may have higher levels of stress. In general, resilient people are believed to possess positive emotions, and such emotions in turn influence their responses to adversity.
in the United States. Middle class families in times of the great depression, children of farmers in times of economical crisis, children of Spanish and Vietnamese immigrants in Germany, adoptive children, who went through trauma and malnutrition.
Why?
Caplan et al. found out the Vietnamese stress the value of education. Parents wanted their children to enjoy a better education than they did themselves. The Vietnamese children spend an average of 3 hours and 10 minutes per day doing their homework and reading for school, while American middle class students just spend an average of 1 hour and 30 minutes per day with these activities.
Nathan Caplan also found out the older siblings were supposed to help their younger siblings. That way the younger ones did not only learn facts but also attitudes towards school and learning from their older siblings. The more siblings a child of Vietnamese parentage has, the more likely is he or she to achieve in school.
Germany is a multi-ethnic society. 8% of the population and 25% of the 15 year olds are born abroad themselves or have as least one parent born abroad. In Germany Vietnamese families started arriving as foreign workers during the 1980s and they are still coming in great numbers to search for a better life. As a rule children of immigrants are not as successful academically as children of native Germans. However it is not true for children of Asian parentage. The Vietnamese are the biggest Asian group in Germany and also one of the poorest ethnic groups. It has been found that Vietnamese parents value education and that Vietnamese students spend a lot more time learning than their German counterparts.,,
Elder was able to identify five resource mechanisms:
One stunning finding was that poverty had slight positive effects on children from the middle classes. Once they reached adulthood those men earned a college degree as often as men from nondeprived middle class homes. In later life they did a little better in terms of economic success than their nondeprived middle class peers.
Men of working class background did not do as well as men from middle class homes. However many of them were upwardly mobile and on most measures they did do just as well as men from never-deprived working class backgrounds.
Investigators from the Ecuadorian Catholic University (Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil
) (Guayaquil) and the Spanish University of Zaragoza
(Zaragoza), performed a comparative study at the Enrique C. Sotomayor Obstetric and Gynecology Hospital (Guayaquil) assessing resilience differences between pregnant adolescents and adults.
A 56.6% of gravids presented total CESD-10 scores 10 or more indicating depressed mood. Despite this, total CESD-10 scores and depressed mood rate did not differ among studied groups. Adolescents did however display lower resilience reflected by lower total resilience scores and a higher rate of scores below the calculated median (P < 0.05). Logistic regression analysis could not establish any risk factor for depressed mood among studied subjects; however, having an adolescent partner and a preterm delivery related to a higher risk for lower resilience.
. Many Spaniards fled to Germany in search of a better life. Most of those immigrants were poor and only few were able to speak proper German. Today their children do as well as German children when it comes to educational success and Spaniard adults do as well as German adults when it comes to occupational success.
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
refers to the idea of an individual's tendency to cope
Coping (psychology)
Coping has been defined in psychological terms by Susan Folkman and Richard Lazarus as "constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing" or "exceeding the resources of the person".Coping is thus expending...
with stress and adversity. This coping may result in the individual “bouncing back” to a previous state of normal functioning, or using the experience of exposure to adversity to produce a “steeling effect” and function better than expected (much like an inoculation gives one the capacity to cope well with future exposure to disease). Resilience is most commonly understood as a process, and not a trait of an individual.
Recently there has also been evidence that resilience can indicate a capacity to resist a sharp decline in functioning even though a person temporarily appears to get worse. A child, for example, may do poorly during critical life transitions (like entering junior high) but experience problems that are less severe than would be expected given the many risks the child faces.
There is also controversy about the indicators of good psychological and social development when resilience is studied across different cultures and contexts. The American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Resilience and Strength in Black Children and Adolescents, for example, notes that there may be special skills that these young people and families have that help them cope, including the ability to resist racial prejudice. People who cope may also show “hidden resilience” when they don’t conform with society’s expectations for how someone is supposed to behave (in some contexts, aggression may be required to cope, or less emotional engagement may be protective in situations of abuse).
In all these instances, resilience is best understood as a process. It is often mistakenly assumed to be a trait of the individual, an idea more typically referred to as “resiliency”. Most research now shows that resilience is the result of individuals being able to interact with their environments and the processes that either promote well-being or protect them against the overwhelming influence of risk factors. These processes can be individual coping strategies, or may be helped along by good families, schools, communities, and social policies that make resilience more likely to occur. In this sense "resilience" occurs when there are cumulative "protective factors". These factors are likely to play a more and more important role the greater the individual’s exposure to cumulative "risk factors". The phrase "risk and resilience"' in this area of study is quite common.
Commonly used terms, which are closely related within psychology, are "psychological resilience", "emotional resilience", "hardiness"
Hardiness (psychological)
Hardiness , alternatively referred to as psychological hardiness, personality hardiness, or cognitive hardiness in the literature, is a personality style first introduced by Suzanne C. Kobasa in 1979...
, "resourcefulness", and "mental toughness". The earlier focus on individual capacity which Anthony described as the “invulnerable child” has evolved into a more multilevel ecological perspective that builds on theory developed by Uri Bronfenbrenner (1979), and more recently discussed in the work of Michael Ungar (2004, 2008), Ann Masten (2001), and Michael Rutter (1987, 2008). The focus in research has shifted from "protective factors" toward protective "processes"; trying to understand how different factors are involved in both promoting well-being and protecting against risk.
Definition of resilience
Resilience is a dynamic process whereby individuals exhibit positive behavioral adaptationAdaptation
An adaptation in biology is a trait with a current functional role in the life history of an organism that is maintained and evolved by means of natural selection. An adaptation refers to both the current state of being adapted and to the dynamic evolutionary process that leads to the adaptation....
when they encounter significant adversity,
trauma
Psychological trauma
Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event...
, tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
, threat
Threat
Threat of force in public international law is a situation between states described by British lawyer Ian Brownlie as:The 1969 Vienna convention on the Law of Treaties notes in its preamble that both the threat and the use of force are prohibited...
s, or even significant sources of stress
Stress (biology)
Stress is a term in psychology and biology, borrowed from physics and engineering and first used in the biological context in the 1930s, which has in more recent decades become commonly used in popular parlance...
. It is different from strengths or developmental assets which are a characteristic of an entire population, regardless of the level of adversity they face. Under adversity, assets function differently (a good school, or parental monitoring, for example, have a great deal more influence in the life of a child from a poorly resourced background than one from a wealthy home with other options for support, recreation, and self-esteem).
Resilience is a two-dimensional construct concerning the exposure of adversity and the positive adjustment outcomes of that adversity. This two-dimensional construct implies two judgments: one about a "positive adaptation" and the other about the significance of risk (or adversity). One point of view about adversity could define it as any risk
Risk
Risk is the potential that a chosen action or activity will lead to a loss . The notion implies that a choice having an influence on the outcome exists . Potential losses themselves may also be called "risks"...
s associated with negative life conditions that are statistically related to adjustment difficulties, such as poverty, children of mothers with schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
, or experiences of disasters. Positive adaptation, on the other hand, is considered in a demonstration of manifested behaviour on social competence or success at meeting any particular tasks at a specific life stage, such as the absence of psychiatric distress after the September 11th terrorism attacks on the United States. Ungar argues that this standard definition of resilience could be problematic because it does not adequately account for cultural and contextual differences in how people in other systems express resilience. Through collaborative mixed methods research in eleven countries, Ungar and his colleagues at the Resilience Research Centre have shown that cultural and contextual factors exert a great deal of influence on the factors that affect resilience among a population of youth-at-risk.
Resilience has been shown to be more than just the capacity of individuals to cope well under adversity. Resilience is better understood as the opportunity and capacity of individuals to navigate their way to psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources that may sustain their well-being, and their opportunity and capacity individually and collectively to negotiate for these resources to be provided and experienced in culturally meaningful ways. Studies of demobilized child soldiers, high school drop-outs, urban poor, immigrant youth, and other populations at risk are showing these patterns. Among adults, these same themes emerge, as detailed in the work of Zautra, Hall and Murray (2010).
History of research on resilience
Garmezy (1973) published the first research findings on resilience. He used epidemiology, which is the study of who gets ill, who doesn't, and why, to uncover the risks and the protective factors that now help define resilience.Garmezy and Streitman (1974) then created tools to look at systems that support development of resilience.
Emmy Werner
Emmy Werner
Emmy E. Werner is an American developmental psychologist. She received her Ph. D. from the University of Nebraska and is currently a professor emeritus in the Department of Human and Community Development at the University of California at DavisDr...
(1982) was one of the early scientists to use the term resilience in the 1970s. She studied a cohort of children from Kauai
Kauai
Kauai or Kauai, known as Tauai in the ancient Kaua'i dialect, is geologically the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands. With an area of , it is the fourth largest of the main islands in the Hawaiian archipelago, and the 21st largest island in the United States. Known also as the "Garden Isle",...
, Hawaii. Kauai was quite poor and many of the children in the study grew up with alcoholic or mentally ill parents. Many of the parents were also out of work. Werner noted that of the children who grew up in these very bad situations, two-thirds exhibited destructive behaviors in their later teen years, such as chronic unemployment, substance abuse, and out-of-wedlock
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
births (in case of teenage girls). However one-third of these youngsters did not exhibit destructive behaviours. Werner called the latter group 'resilient'. Resilient children and their families had traits that made them different from non-resilient children and families.
Resilience emerged as a major theoretical and research topic from the studies of children of schizophrenic mothers in the 1980s. In Masten’s (1989) study, the results showed that children with a schizophrenic parent may not obtain comforting caregiving compared to children with healthy parents, and such situations had an impact on children’s development. However, some children of ill parents thrived well and were competent in academic achievement, and therefore led researchers to make efforts to understand such responses to adversity.
In the onset of the research on resilience, researchers have been devoted to discovering the protective factors that explain people’s adaptation to adverse conditions, such as maltreatment, catastrophic life events, or urban poverty. The focus of empirical work then has been shifted to understand the underlying protective processes. Researchers endeavor to uncover how some factors (e.g. family) may contribute to positive outcomes.
Expressions of resilience
Resilience can be described by viewing:- good outcomes regardless of high-risk status,
- constant competence under stressStress (medicine)Stress is a term in psychology and biology, borrowed from physics and engineering and first used in the biological context in the 1930s, which has in more recent decades become commonly used in popular parlance...
, - recovery from traumaPsychological traumaPsychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event...
, and - using challenges for growth that makes future hardships more tolerable.
Resilience describes people who are expected to adapt successfully even though they experience risk factors that ‘stack the odds’ against them experiencing good development. Risk factors are related to poor or negative outcomes. For example, poverty, low socioeconomic status, and mothers with schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
are coupled with lower academic achievement and more emotional or behavioral problems. Risk factors may be cumulative, carrying additive and exponential risks when they co-occur. When these risk factors happen, according to a study conducted on children, resilient children are capable of resulting in no behavioural problems and developing well. Additionally, they are more active and socially responsive. These positive outcomes are attributed to some protective factors, such as good parenting or positive school experiences.
Resilience is also treated as an effective coping mechanism when people are under stress, such as divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
. In this context, resilience is relevant with sustained competence exhibited by individuals who experience challenging conditions. Most research built on this perspective focuses on the children’s response to parents’ divorce in terms of gender. Boys show more conduct problems than do girls; girls obtain more support from mothers and are less exposed to family conflict than boys. Although divorce may have some negative impacts on children’s development, it may help children in single households to become more responsible than those in dual-parents households because of helping with chores. Some protective factors attributing to resilient children in single-family, for example, are adults caring for children during or after major stressors (e.g., divorce), or self-efficacy
Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is a term used in psychology, roughly corresponding to a person's belief in their own competence.It has been defined as the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain set of goals. It is believed that our personalized ideas of self-efficacy affect...
for motivating endeavor at adaptation.
Finally, resilience can be viewed as the phenomenon of recovery from a prolonged or severe adversity, or from an immediate danger or stress. In this case, resilience is not related to vulnerability
Vulnerability
Vulnerability refer to the susceptibility of a person, group, society, sex or system to physical or emotional injury or attack. The term can also refer to a person who lets their guard down, leaving themselves open to censure or criticism...
. People who experience acute trauma, for example, may show extreme anxiety, sleep problems, and intrusive thoughts. Over time, these symptoms decrease and recovery is likely. This realm of research shows that age and the supportive qualities of the family influence the condition of recovery. The Buffalo Creek dam disaster
Buffalo Creek Flood
The Buffalo Creek Flood was a disaster that occurred on February 26, 1972, when the Pittston Coal Company's coal slurry impoundment dam #3, located on a hillside in Logan County, West Virginia, USA, burst four days after having been declared 'satisfactory' by a federal mine inspector.The resulting...
, for example, had longer effects on older children than on younger. Additionally, children with supportive families show fewer symptoms (e.g., dreams of personal death) than children from troubled families, as revealed by a study on victims of the 1976 Chowchilla
Chowchilla, California
Chowchilla is a city in Madera County, California, United States. Chowchilla is located northwest of Madera, at an elevation of 240 feet . It is a principal city of the Madera–Chowchilla Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 18,720 at the 2010 census, up from 11,127 at the 2000...
bus kidnapping.
Factors related to resilience
Several factors are found to modify the negative effects of adverse life situations. Many studies show that the primary factor is to have relationships that provide care and support, create love and trust, and offer encouragement, both within and outside the familyFamily
In human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children...
. Additional factors are also associated with resilience, like the capacity to make realistic plans, having self-confidence
Self-confidence
The socio-psychological concept of self-confidence relates to self-assuredness in one's personal judgment, ability, power, etc., sometimes manifested excessively.Being confident in yourself is infectious if you present yourself well, others will want to follow in your foot steps towards...
and a positive self image
Self image
A person's self-image is the mental picture, generally of a kind that is quite resistant to change, that depicts not only details that are potentially available to objective investigation by others A person's self-image is the mental picture, generally of a kind that is quite resistant to change,...
, developing
communications skills
Communication skills training
Various types and forms of the Group Communication Skills Training are used all over the world for those who are trying to improve their communication skills. Thousands of books and articles devoted to these topics are published every year...
, and the capacity to manage strong feelings and impulses
Impulse (psychology)
An impulse is a wish or urge, particularly a sudden one. It can be considered as a normal and fundamental part of human thought processes, but also one that can become problematic, as in a condition like obsessive-compulsive disorder....
.
Another protective factor is related to moderating the negative effects of environmental hazards or a stressful situation in order to direct vulnerable individuals to optimistic paths, such as external social support. More specifically, Werner (1995) distinguished three contexts for protective factors: (1) personal attributes, including outgoing, bright, and positive self-concept
Self-concept
Self-concept is a multi-dimensional construct that refers to an individual's perception of "self" in relation to any number of characteristics, such as academics , gender roles and sexuality, racial identity, and many others. Each of these characteristics is a research domain Self-concept (also...
s; (2) the family, such as having close bonds with at least one family member or an emotionally stable parent; and (3) the community, like receiving support or counsel from peers.
Besides the above distinction on resilience, research has also been devoted to discovering the individual differences in resilience. Self-esteem
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a term in psychology to reflect a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame: some would distinguish how 'the self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the...
, ego-control, and ego-resiliency are related to behavioral adaptation. For example, maltreated children who feel good about themselves may process risk situations differently by attributing different reasons to the environments they experience and, thereby, avoid producing negative internalized self-perceptions. Ego-control is "the threshold or operating characteristics of an individual with regard to the expression or containment" (Block & Block, 1980, p. 43) of their impulses, feelings, and desires. Ego-resilience refers to “dynamic capacity,……to modify his or her model level of ego-control, in either direction, as a function of the demand characteristics of the environmental context" (Block & Block, 1980, p. 48).
Maltreated children, who experienced some risk factors (e.g., single parenting, limited maternal education, or family unemployment), showed lower ego-resilience and intelligence than nonmaltreated children (Cicchetti et al., 1993). Furthermore, maltreated children are more likely than nonmaltreated children to demonstrate disruptive-aggressive, withdraw, and internalized behavior problems (Cicchetti et al., 1993). Finally, ego-resiliency, and positive self-esteem
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a term in psychology to reflect a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame: some would distinguish how 'the self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the...
were predictors of competent adaptation in the maltreated children (Cicchetti et al., 1993).
Demographic information (e.g., gender) and resources (e.g., social support) are also used to predict resilience. Examining people's adaptation after the 9/11 attacks (Bonanno, Galea Bucciarelli, & Vlahov, 2007) showed women were associated with less likelihood of resilience than men. Also, individuals who were less involved in affinity groups and organisations showed less resilience.
King, King, Fairbank, Keane, and Adams (1998) studied resilience in Vietnam War veterans and found social support to be a major factor contributing to resilience.
Schnurr, Lunney, and Sengupta (2004) found that several protective factors among those were the following factors protecting against the development of PTSD:
- Japanese-American ethnicity, high school degree or college education, older age at entry to war, higher socioeconomic status, and a more positive paternal relationship as premilitary factors
- Social support at homecoming and current social support as postmilitary factors
and the following factors protecting among the maintenance of PTSD
- Native Hawaiian or Japanese-American ethnicity and college education as premilitary factors
- Current social support as postmilitary factor
A number of other factors that promote resilience have been identified:
- The ability to cope with stress effectively and in a healthy manner
- Having good problem-solving skills
- Seeking help
- Holding the belief that there is something one can do to manage your feelings and cope
- Having social support
- Being connected with others, such as family or friends
- Self-disclosure of the trauma to loved ones
- Spirituality
- Having an identity as a survivor as opposed to a victim
- Helping others
- Finding positive meaning in the trauma
Certain aspects of religions/spirituality may, hypothetically, promote or hinder certain psychological virtues that increase resiliance. Research has not established connection between spirituality and resilience. According to the 4th edition of Psychology of Religion by Hood, et al., the "study of positive psychology is a relatively new development...there has not yet been much direct empirical research looking specifically at the association of religion and ordinary strengths and virtues". In a review of the literature on the relationship between religiosity/spirituality and PTSD, amongst the significant findings, about half of the studies showed a positive relationship and half showed a negative relationship between measures of religiosity/spirituality and resilience. The United States Army has received criticism for promoting spirituality in its new [Comprehensive Soldier Fitness] program as a way prevent PTSD, due to the lack of conclusive supporting data.
An emerging field in the study of resilience is the neurobiological basis of resilience to stress. For example, neuropeptide Y (NPY) and 5-Dehydroepiandrosterone (5-DHEA) are thought to limit the stress response by reducing sympathetic nervous system activation and protecting the brain from the potentially harmful effects of chronically elevated cortisol levels respectively. In addition, the relationship between social support and stress resilience is thought to be mediated by the oxytocin system's impact on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis
Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis
The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis , also known as thelimbic-hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and, occasionally, as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-gonadotropic axis, is a complex set of direct influences and feedback interactions among the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland ,...
.
Resilience building
The American Psychological AssociationAmerican Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...
suggests "10 Ways to Build Resilience", which are:
(1) maintaining good relationship
Relationship
Relationship or relationships may refer to:* Interpersonal relationship* Intimate relationship* In mathematics and statistics:** Binary relation** Causal relationship** Correlation and dependence** Direct relationship** Inverse relationship...
s with close family members, friends and others;
(2) to avoid seeing crises
Crisis
A crisis is any event that is, or expected to lead to, an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community or whole society...
or stressful
Stress (biology)
Stress is a term in psychology and biology, borrowed from physics and engineering and first used in the biological context in the 1930s, which has in more recent decades become commonly used in popular parlance...
events as unbearable problems;
(3) to accept circumstances that cannot be changed;
(4) to develop realistic goal
Goal
A goal is an objective, or a projected computation of affairs, that a person or a system plans or intends to achieve.Goal, GOAL or G.O.A.L may also refer to:Sport...
s and move towards them;
(5) to take decisive actions in adverse situations;
(6) to look for opportunities of self-discovery after a struggle with loss;
(7) developing self-confidence;
(8) to keep a long-term perspective
Perspective (cognitive)
Perspective in theory of cognition is the choice of a context or a reference from which to sense, categorize, measure or codify experience, cohesively forming a coherent belief, typically for comparing with another...
and consider the stressful event in a broader context;
(9) to maintain a hopeful outlook, expecting good things and visualizing
Mental image
A mental image is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of perceiving some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses...
what is wished;
(10) to take care of one's mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
and body
Body
With regard to living things, a body is the physical body of an individual. "Body" often is used in connection with appearance, health issues and death...
, exercising
Physical exercise
Physical exercise is any bodily activity that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health and wellness. It is performed for various reasons including strengthening muscles and the cardiovascular system, honing athletic skills, weight loss or maintenance, as well as for the purpose of...
regularly, paying attention to one's own needs and feelings and engaging in relaxing activities
Leisure
Leisure, or free time, is time spent away from business, work, and domestic chores. It is also the periods of time before or after necessary activities such as eating, sleeping and, where it is compulsory, education....
that one enjoys. Learning from the past and maintaining flexibility and balance in life are also cited.
The Young Foundation
Young Foundation
The Young Foundation was launched in the spring of 2006 following the merger of the Institute of Community Studies and the Mutual Aid Centre. It is named after Michael Young, the British sociologist and social activist who created over 60 organisations including the Open University, Which? and...
's work on wellbeing in the UK emphasises 'subjective wellbeing', what people feel about the quality of their life
Quality of life
The term quality of life is used to evaluate the general well-being of individuals and societies. The term is used in a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, and politics. Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of...
. A key element of this is 'resilience', how people bounce back from adversity. Their work includes:
- Working with Lord Richard Layard from the London School of Economics, the IDeA and three leading local authorities, Hertfordshire, Manchester and South Tyneside, as the lead partner in the Local Wellbeing Project to look at the different ways in which local government and its local partners can promote wellbeing. The State of Happiness, the final Local Wellbeing Project report, brings together three years of groundbreaking work in the three partner local authority areas as well as other national and international developments in this field.
- Emotional Resilience for Gangs - commissioned by Harrow Metropolitan Police to develop and pilot an emotional resilience programme targeting 14-19 year olds who are offending or at risk of offending, and are associated with gang activity. The Young Foundation is working in collaboration with Dr Ilona Boniwell, one of Europe's leading positive psychologists, to develop this new programme, training professionals in Harrow from Youth Services, the Anti-social Behaviour Unit, Safer Neighbourhoods Team and the Wealdstone Anti-social Behaviour Partnership. Training of professionals and the delivery of the pilot will take place in early 2011 with a report to follow.
Resilience and social programs
Head Start was shown to promote resilience. So was the Big Brothers Big SistersBig Brothers Big Sisters of America
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America is a 501 non-profit organization whose mission is to help children reach their potential through professionally supported, one-to-one relationships with mentors that try to have a measurable impact on youth....
Programme, the Abecedarian Early Intervention Project
Abecedarian Early Intervention Project
The Carolina Abecedarian Project was a controlled experiment that was conducted in 1972 in North Carolina, United States, by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute to study the potential benefits of early childhood education for poor children to enhance school readiness...
, and social programs for youth with emotional or behavioral difficulties
Children and resilience
Resilience in children refers to individuals who are doing better than expected, given a history that includes risk or adverse experience. Simply put, resilience requires two conditions to be met: (1) the child must have experienced some sort of risk or adversity that has been linked with poor outcomes, and (2) the child is generally doing okay despite being exposed to that risk or adversity; they are not showing that poor outcome.One view is that resilience is a description of a group of children. It is not a trait or something that some children 'just have.' There is no such thing as an 'invulnerable child' who can overcome any obstacle that life throws at her (although some children may seem that way!). Resilience is not a rare and magical quality. In fact, it is quite common. Resilience is the product of a large number of developmental processes over time that has allowed children who experience some sort of risk to continue to develop competently (while other children have not). Research on 'protective factors' has helped developmental scientists to understand what matters most for resilient children. Protective factors are characteristics of children or situations that particularly help children in the context of risk. There are many different protective factors that are important for resilient children. Two that have emerged time and again in studies of resilient children are good cognitive functioning (like cognitive self-regulation and IQ) and positive relationships (especially with competent adults, like parents). Children who have protective factors in their lives tend to do better in some risky contexts when compared to children without protective factors in the same contexts. However, this is not a justification to expose any child to risk. Children do better when not exposed to high levels of risk or adversity.
A separate view is that certain children survive extremely high risk environments, such as a schizophrenic parent, through personal invulnerability -- a stubborn resistance to being drawn into a maelstrom of mental illness due to a profound attachment to reality:
- “…First, at a conference on risk research held in Puerto Rico in 1980, Manfred Bleuler presented a striking clinical vignette. In describing Vreni, a remarkably “sane” offspring of a severely disturbed, chronic schizophrenic mother, Blueler (1980) commented on her need for mastery over an otherwise intolerable situation. This was a young woman who clearly was not a “superkid”, but who managed to cope well, to care for her ill mother and her siblings, and later to marry and have children of her own. What comes across in Bleuler’s description, however, is the competent offspring’s ability to see the disorder or the circumstances as outside of herself, to seek out ways of understanding her parent’s problems, and to conceptualize them within a manageable, reality-focused framework.
- “Secondly, Anthony (1974) commented in a similar fashion in reviewing the attributes of the well-functioning offspring of disturbed parents in his sample. He stated that these offspring ‘had a stubborn resistance to the process of being engulfed by the illness; a curiosity in studying the etiology, diagnosis, symptoms and treatment of the illness…; [and] a capacity to develop an objective, realistic, somewhat distant and yet distinctly compassionate approach to the parental illness, neither retreating from it nor being intimidated by it’ (p. 40).
- “Finally, Space and Cromwell (1978) have described what they call the ‘unique personal construct structure’ of the healthy offspring of a schizophrenic parent. In their view, such an individual does not accept the conceptual structure of the psychotic parent, but instead formulates a conceptual structure based on an internal locus of control.
- “All three of these sources of data uniformly point to the capacity of the child to objectify the disturbed parent and to view her as outside the self. This view also characterizes the child’s continuing desire to master an understanding of the parent’s pathology – in essence, to deal with the aberrant behavior or circumstances through learning and other more objective and reality-based approaches…”
- --The Invulnerable Child', Elwyn James Anthony, p. 226
When it comes to children, there are still many scientific debates with respect to resilience. One debate involves differing opinions about what constitutes 'doing okay.' There is considerable agreement that child competence can be defined and measured in a way that can indicate whether or not the child is doing well. Called 'age-salient developmental tasks,' these are things that are generally expected of children of a certain age, in a certain culture, of a certain time or point in history. Developmental tasks can span all areas or domains of a person's life. For example, in many cultures (but certainly not all) 14 month old children are expected to be able to show the beginnings of spoken language, early motor coordination that allows them to start walking, able to form an attachment relationship with a primary caregiver, etc. These tasks certainly change with age; generally children are expected to show increasingly sophisticated cognitive and social abilities as they grow older: 5 year olds are expected to show a higher degree of independence and self-regulation skills (for example), compared to a 2 year old. Resilient children can be thought of as those who show competence in age-salient developmental tasks even though they have experienced some risk or adversity that threatened that competence. Others have focused on different criteria for 'doing okay', such as the absence of mental health problems like depression or conduct problems. Still others have focused on happiness or the experience of positive emotions.
Building resilience in the classroom
Resilient children as described by Garmezy as working and playing well and holding high expectations, have often been characterized using constructs such as locus of controlLocus of control
Locus of control is a theory in personality psychology referring to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them. Understanding of the concept was developed by Julian B...
, self-esteem
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a term in psychology to reflect a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame: some would distinguish how 'the self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the...
, self-efficacy
Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is a term used in psychology, roughly corresponding to a person's belief in their own competence.It has been defined as the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain set of goals. It is believed that our personalized ideas of self-efficacy affect...
, and autonomy
Autonomy
Autonomy is a concept found in moral, political and bioethical philosophy. Within these contexts, it is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision...
. Benard concluded that resilient children have high expectations, a meaning for life, goals, personal agency, and inter-personal problem-solving skills. All of these things work together to prevent the debilitating behaviors that are associated with learned helplessness
Learned helplessness
Learned helplessness, as a technical term in animal psychology and related human psychology, means a condition of a human person or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance...
. Chess identified “adaptive distancing” as the psychological process whereby an individual can stand apart from distressed family members and friends in order to accomplish constructive goals and advance his or her psychological development. Moving away to college after high school is a way of practicing adaptive distancing. Classrooms in which students are given an opportunity to respond, an engaging cooperative learning environment, a participating role in setting goals, and a high expectation for student achievement. All of these characteristics help students develop a sense of belonging and involvement. These two characteristics help to reduce the feelings of alienation and disengagement. With that kind of connection in the school, students will have more of a protective shield against the adverse circumstances that life throws at them.
The role a community has in fostering resilience in a child
Communities play a huge role in fostering resilience. Benard identifies three characteristics of those types of communities (1) availability of social organizations that provide an array of resources to residents, (2) consistent expression of social norms so that community members understand what constitutes desirable behavior, (3) and opportunities for children and youth to participate in the life of the community as valued members. The clearest sign of a cohesive and supportive community is the presence of social organizations that provide healthy human development. Services are unlikely to be used unless there is good communication concerning them. Community-school relationships are very important to give extra resources to meet even basic psychological needs of students and families.The role a family has in fostering resilience in a child
Fostering resilience in children requires family environments that are caring and structured, hold high expectations for children’s behavior, and encourage participation in the life of the family. Most resilient children have a strong relationship with at least one adult, not always a parent, and this relationship helps to diminish risk associated with family discord. Benard found that even though divorce produces stress, the availability of social support from family and community can reduce stress and yield positive outcomes. Any family that emphasizes the value of assigned chores, caring for brothers or sisters, and the contribution of part-time work in supporting the family helps to foster resilience.The role religion plays in fostering resilience
When youths from problem neighbourhoods join a church their academic performance improves. The poorer a neighbourhood is, the more church attendance helps kids academically. Improving academic performance seems to flow more from attending church than from merely believing. The church's social life influences youth from poor communities more than doctrine does. Church attendance also improves the physical, social, and emotional health of students. According to Glen Elder: "What you have in the role of the religious community is a selected group of people who share values and are committed to the success of the child".This pattern is likely the result of many protective processes that take place inside a religious institution. Ungar and his colleagues identified seven aspects of resilience across many different cultures. Each depends on the other. These seven aspects include:
| 1. Access to material resources | Availability of financial, educational, medical and employment assistance and/or opportunities, as well as access to food, clothing and shelter |
| 2. Access to supportive relationships | Relationships with significant others, peers and adults within one’s family and community |
| 3. Development of a desirable personal identity | Desirable sense of one’s self as having a personal and collective sense of purpose, ability for self-appraisal of strengths and weaknesses, aspirations, beliefs and values, including spiritual and religious identification |
| 4. Experiences of power and control | Experiences of caring for one’s self and others, the ability to affect change in one’s social and physical environment in order to access health resources |
| 5. Adherence to cultural traditions | Adherence to, or knowledge of, one’s local and/or global cultural practices, values and beliefs |
| 6. Experiences of social justice | Experiences related to finding a meaningful role in one’s community that brings with it acceptance and social equality |
| 7. Experiences of a sense of cohesion with others | Balancing one’s personal interests with a sense of responsibility to the greater good; feeling a part of something larger than one’s self socially and spiritually |
For example, attending a church has been shown to increase a child’s social network, provide a feeling of cohesion and belonging in her community, even promote a sense of personal control and sense of social justice when threatened. It is this complexity and multilevel nature of resilience that explains how people use the internal and external resources (assets) that are both available and accessible to overcome adversity.
Resilience and emotion
Some studies confirmed the association between resilience and positive emotion (e.g., Ong, Bergeman, Bisconti, & Wallace, 2006; Tugade et al., 2004).Examining the role positive emotion
Emotion
Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...
plays in resilience, Ong et al. (2006) found that widows with high levels of resilience experience more positive (e.g., peaceful) and negative (e.g., anxious) emotions than those with low levels. The former group shows high emotional complexity which is the capacity to maintain the differentiation of positive and negative emotional states while underlying stress.
Ong et al. (2006) further suggest that the adaptive consequence of resilience is a function of an increase in emotional complexity while stress is present.
Moreover, high resilient widows showed the likelihood of controlling their positive emotional experiences to recover and bounce back from daily stress. Indeed, positive emotions were found to disrupt the experience of stress and help high resilient individuals to recover efficiently from daily stress (Fredrickson et al., 2003). In this case, some studies argue (e.g., Fredrickson et al., 2003; Tugade et al., 2004) that positive emotion helps resilient people to construct psychological resources that are necessary for coping successfully with significant catastrophe, such as the September 11th attacks. As a result, positive emotion experienced by resilient people functions as a protective factor to moderate the magnitude of adversity to individuals and assists them to cope well in the future (Tugade et al., 2004).
In addition to the above findings, a study (Fredrickson et al., 2003) further suggests that positive emotions are active elements within resilience.
By examining people’s emotional responses to the September 11th, Fredrickson et al. (2003) suggests that positive emotions are critical elements in resilience and as a mediator that buffer people from depression
Depression (mood)
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless...
after the crises. Moreover, high resilient people were more likely to notice positive meanings within the problems they faced (e.g., felt grateful to be alive), endured fewer depressive symptoms, and experienced more positive emotions than low resilient people after terrorism attacks (Fredrickson et al., 2003). Similar results were obtained in another study regarding the effects of 911 attacks on resilient individuals’ healthy adjustment (Bonanno et al., 2007).
People with high levels of resilience are likely to show low levels of depression, and less likely to smoke cigarettes or use marijuana (Bonanno et al., 2007). Moreover, low resilient people exhibit the difficulties of regulating negative emotions and demonstrate sensitive reaction to daily stressful life events (e.g., the loss of loved one) (Ong et al., 2006). They are likely to believe that there is no end for the unpleasant experience of daily stressors and may have higher levels of stress. In general, resilient people are believed to possess positive emotions, and such emotions in turn influence their responses to adversity.
Resilient groups
Psychological Resilience has been studied in a number of groups. Among those are the children of European Jews in the United States, the children of the Vietnamese boat peopleBoat people
Boat people is a term that usually refers to refugees, illegal immigrants or asylum seekers who emigrate in numbers in boats that are sometimes old and crudely made...
in the United States. Middle class families in times of the great depression, children of farmers in times of economical crisis, children of Spanish and Vietnamese immigrants in Germany, adoptive children, who went through trauma and malnutrition.
The children of poor Vietnamese parents in the U.S.A. and Germany
Nathan Caplan studied the children of poor Vietnamese parents in the US. Most of these parents were refugees. In many cases they did not own anything but the clothes they were wearing when they arrived. Most did not speak English. Half of the parents had less than five years of formal schooling. The refugees studied by Caplan lived in the worst neighborhoods of big cities. Yet their children turned out to be academically more successful than American middle class children.Why?
Caplan et al. found out the Vietnamese stress the value of education. Parents wanted their children to enjoy a better education than they did themselves. The Vietnamese children spend an average of 3 hours and 10 minutes per day doing their homework and reading for school, while American middle class students just spend an average of 1 hour and 30 minutes per day with these activities.
Nathan Caplan also found out the older siblings were supposed to help their younger siblings. That way the younger ones did not only learn facts but also attitudes towards school and learning from their older siblings. The more siblings a child of Vietnamese parentage has, the more likely is he or she to achieve in school.
Germany is a multi-ethnic society. 8% of the population and 25% of the 15 year olds are born abroad themselves or have as least one parent born abroad. In Germany Vietnamese families started arriving as foreign workers during the 1980s and they are still coming in great numbers to search for a better life. As a rule children of immigrants are not as successful academically as children of native Germans. However it is not true for children of Asian parentage. The Vietnamese are the biggest Asian group in Germany and also one of the poorest ethnic groups. It has been found that Vietnamese parents value education and that Vietnamese students spend a lot more time learning than their German counterparts.,,
Children of American farmers
Elder and Conger examined data from several Iowa counties to see how the farm crisis of the 1980s and 1990s affected children growing up in rural parts of the state. They found that a that a large number of those young people were on paths to successful development and life achievement. Most children of those children grew up to be academically successful and law-abiding.Elder was able to identify five resource mechanisms:
- strong intergenerational bonds, joint activity between parents and children
- being socialized into productive roles in work and social leadership; stressing non-material goals
- a network of positive engagement in church, school, and community life
- close ties with grandparents, support from grandparents
- strong family connections with the community
Children in times of the Great Depression
Elder studied the life of men who were children during the Great Depression of 1929-1939 and came to maturity at the outset of World War II. When these children came of age Elder found them to be healthy, law abiding, well adapted and bright.One stunning finding was that poverty had slight positive effects on children from the middle classes. Once they reached adulthood those men earned a college degree as often as men from nondeprived middle class homes. In later life they did a little better in terms of economic success than their nondeprived middle class peers.
Men of working class background did not do as well as men from middle class homes. However many of them were upwardly mobile and on most measures they did do just as well as men from never-deprived working class backgrounds.
Depressive Symptoms and Resilience among Pregnant Adolescents
Pregnancies among adolescents are considered as a complication, as they favour education interruption, poor present and future health, higher rates of poverty, problems for present and future children, among other negative outcomes.Investigators from the Ecuadorian Catholic University (Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil
Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil
Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil, UCSG, is a private, catholic, higher education center, along with Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador in Ecuador.- History :...
) (Guayaquil) and the Spanish University of Zaragoza
University of Zaragoza
The University of Zaragoza or sometimes Saragossa University is a university located in Zaragoza, in the Aragon region of Spain...
(Zaragoza), performed a comparative study at the Enrique C. Sotomayor Obstetric and Gynecology Hospital (Guayaquil) assessing resilience differences between pregnant adolescents and adults.
A 56.6% of gravids presented total CESD-10 scores 10 or more indicating depressed mood. Despite this, total CESD-10 scores and depressed mood rate did not differ among studied groups. Adolescents did however display lower resilience reflected by lower total resilience scores and a higher rate of scores below the calculated median (P < 0.05). Logistic regression analysis could not establish any risk factor for depressed mood among studied subjects; however, having an adolescent partner and a preterm delivery related to a higher risk for lower resilience.
Spaniards in Germany
In the 1970s, Spain was a dictatorship under the rule of Francisco FrancoFrancisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
. Many Spaniards fled to Germany in search of a better life. Most of those immigrants were poor and only few were able to speak proper German. Today their children do as well as German children when it comes to educational success and Spaniard adults do as well as German adults when it comes to occupational success.
See also
- Al SiebertAl SiebertLawrence Albert "Al" Siebert, was an American author and educator. A native of Oregon, he was best known for his research on psychological resilience and the inner nature of highly resilient survivors...
- Emotional intelligenceEmotional intelligenceEmotional intelligence is a skill or ability in the case of the trait EI model, a self-perceived ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups. Various models and definitions have been proposed of which the ability and trait EI models are the most...
- Health realizationHealth realizationHealth realization is a resiliency approach to personal and community psychology first developed in the 1980s by Roger C. Mills and George Pransky, and based on ideas and insights these psychologists elaborated from attending the lectures of philosopher and author Sydney Banks...
- Liz MurrayLiz MurrayElizabeth "Liz" Murray is an American inspirational speaker who is best known as having been homeless in her youth, and as having overcome her hardship to achieve success.- Biography :...
- Positive psychologyPositive psychologyPositive psychology is a recent branch of psychology whose purpose was summed up in 1998 by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: "We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise, which achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving in...
- SalutogenesisSalutogenesisSalutogenesis is a term coined by Aaron Antonovsky, a professor of medical sociology. The term describes an approach focusing on factors that support human health and well-being, rather than on factors that cause disease...
- Self-confidenceSelf-confidenceThe socio-psychological concept of self-confidence relates to self-assuredness in one's personal judgment, ability, power, etc., sometimes manifested excessively.Being confident in yourself is infectious if you present yourself well, others will want to follow in your foot steps towards...
- Self (psychology)Self (psychology)The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive and affective representation of one's identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology derived from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the...
- Stress managementStress managementStress management is the alteration of stress and especially chronic stress often for the purpose of improving everyday functioning.Stress produces numerous symptoms which vary according to persons, situations, and severity. These can include physical health decline as well as depression. According...
- Differential SusceptibilityDifferential susceptibility hypothesisAccording to the differential susceptibility hypothesis by Belsky individuals vary in the degree they are affected by experiences or qualities of the environment they are exposed to...
External links
- Resilience Research at Dalhousie University
- Resilience.es
- What is psychological resilience? - Wilderdom
- Classroom simulation based on Cairns and Cairns's landmark longitudinal study of adolescents (with notes for running the simulation)
- WestEd CHKS Resilience & Youth Development - Resilience Section of WestEd's California Healthy KidsHealthy KidsHealthy Kids is shorthand for a number of programs in various states of the United States of America and in other nations, generally which provide insurance or similar services to children at low cost or for free, to qualifying families.Among these programs are the following:-USA:*Action for...
Survey Website - National Resilience Resource Center, University of Minnesota
- 40 developmental assets - Search Institute
- Resiliency Information
- Read about the book "children of the land"
- Life in school: narratives of resiliency among Vietnamese-Canadian youths
- Youth Aggression and Violence: Risk, Resilience, and Prevention. ERIC Digest
- Children Of The Great Depression By Glen H. Elder, Jr.
- Promoting Resilience: A Review of Effective Strategies for Child Care Services
- Building Resilience in a Turbulent World
- Want Better Grades? Go to Church Religion was found to increase resilience in youth
- Test your resilience on The Israel Center for the Treatment of Psychotrauma website
- From homeless to Harvard: graduate sets sight on success story of a resilient girl
- Resilient Youth Research Group Canadian research group based on promoting resilience in youth.