Resilience has been the subject of so little research compared to other related topics such as stress or burnout that when a high quality scientific paper comes out about it it is worth mentioning, especially when it describes the development of resilience through the early years.
A paper by Luthar et al (1) describes the capacity of some people with schizophrenia who are competent at work, social relations, marriage and capacity to fulfill responsibility as prognostic of relatively resilient trajectories. (p544)
Likewise, these authors highlight the studies of children with mothers who suffer from mental illness as one of the starting points of the scientific concept of childhood resilience.
That many of these children thrived despite their high risk status was evidence of the development of a resilient character. The authors summarise what they call correlates of protective factors...themes that recur across studies include the importance of close relations with supportive adults, effective schools, and connections with competent, prosocial adults in the wider community (p545).
They go on to summarise some of the literature on the trait-state debate in relation to resilience. Is resilience a personality characteristic, or is it determined by the situation in which we find ourselves? Using the literature on childhood development of resilience they outline the difference between resilience and resiliency.
Resiliency
Resiliency can be viewed as a personality characteristic of the child encompassing resourcefulness and sturdiness of character and can exist whether the person is exposed to stress or not.
Resilience
Resilience on the other hand requires two conditions to be met - the presence of a threat to the wellbeing of the child and evidence of positive adaptation of the child despite the adversity. Use of the term resilience rather than resiliency implies positive adjustment under challenging life conditions and avoids the perception that low resiliency implies that children do not have what it takes to overcome adversity.
Included in the paper is a discussion on the multidimensional nature of resilience. Are there different types of resilience across different situations, or is resilience a single concept that should emerge across all adverse situations? Referring to the research literature they note that among children with histories of maltreatment two thirds were academically resilient yet only 21% were socially competent. They describe the need to differentiate between different types of resilience suggesting that the research shows this to be common sense. Amongst children, for example, resilience can be seen as educational resilience, emotional resilience and behavioural resilience.
Stability of resilience over time
One of the most interesting and uplifting discussions in the paper relates to the stability of resilience over time. There have been some well designed longitudinal studies of children through childhood, adolesence and into adult life (2) & (3). This research shows that over-all, at-risk children who excel in critical domains continue to reflect generally positive adaptational profiles over time.
Across a period of 30 years, most children who were labeled as resilient maintained high functioning in everyday life. The authors state that, therefore, resilience is not a transient or ephemeral phenomenon.
(1). Luthar, S., Cicchetti, D., & Becker, B. (2000) The Construct of Resilience: A Critical Evaluation and Guidelines for Future Work. Child Development. May/June 2000. Vol 71, No. 3 pp543-563
(2). Werner, E.E. (1994) Overcoming the odds. Journal of Developmental and BEhavioural Pediatrics, 2, 131-136
(3). Werner, E.E. (1995). Resilience in development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 3, 81-85
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