User:Djward21/Psychological resilience

Article Draft

Lead

Psychological resilience is the ability to cope mentally or emotionally with a crisis or to return to pre-crisis status quickly. The term was popularized in the 1970s and 1980s by psychologist Emmy E. Werner as she conducted a forty-year-long study of a cohort of Hawaiian children who came from low socioeconomic status backgrounds^{[citation needed]}. Resilience exists when the person uses "mental processes and behaviors in promoting personal assets and protecting self from the potential negative effects of stressors". In simpler terms, psychological resilience is an adaptation in a persons psychological traits and experiences that allow them to regain or remain in a healthy mental state during crises/chaos without long-term negative consequences. A lot of criticism of this topic comes from the fact that it is difficult to measure and test this psychological construct because resiliency can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Most psychological paradigms (biomedical, cognitive-behavioral, sociocultural, etc.) have their own perspective of what resilience looks like, where it comes from, and how it can be developed. Despite numerous definitions of psychological resilience, most of these definitions center around two concepts: adversity and positive adaptation. Many psychologists agree that positive emotions, social support, and hardiness can influence an individual to become more resilient.

Overview

Psychological resilience refers to ones ability to resist adverse mental conditions that are often associated with unfavorable life circumstances. This differs from psychological recovery which is associated with a journey back to mental conditions and functions previously held before a subjective or objective traumatic experience or personal loss. Research on psychological resilience has shown that it plays a crucial role in promoting mental health and well-being. Resilient individuals are better equipped to navigate through life's challenges, maintain positive emotions, and recover from setbacks more effectively. They demonstrate higher levels of self-efficacy, optimism, and problem-solving skills, which contribute to their ability to adapt and thrive in adverse situations. Numerous factors influence an individual's level of resilience. These factors can be categorized into internal and external factors. Internal factors include personal characteristics, such as self-esteem, self-regulation, and a positive outlook on life. External factors include social support systems, including relationships with family, friends, and community, as well as access to resources and opportunities. Psychological interventions and strategies can be employed to enhance resilience. These may include cognitive-behavioral techniques, mindfulness practices, building psychosocial factors, fostering positive emotions, and promoting self-compassion. By cultivating these skills and resources, individuals c enhance their resilience and better cope with adversity.

Definition

Resilience is generally thought of as a "positive adaptation" after a stressful or adverse situation. When a person is "bombarded by daily stress, it disrupts their internal and external sense of balance, presenting challenges as well as opportunities." However, the routine stressors of daily life can have positive impacts which promote resilience. It is still unknown what the correct level of stress is for each individual. Some people can handle greater amounts of stress than others. A portion of psychologists believe that it is not the stress itself that promotes resilience but rather the individual's perception of their stress and their perceived personal level of control. The presence of stress allows people to practice this process. According to Germain and Gitterman (1996), stress is experienced in an individual's life course at times of difficult life transitions, involving developmental and social change; traumatic life events, including grief and loss; and environmental pressures, encompassing poverty and community violence. Resilience is the integrated adaptation of physical, mental and spiritual aspects in a set of "good or bad" circumstances, a coherent sense of self that is able to maintain normative developmental tasks that occur at various stages of life. The Children's Institute of the University of Rochester explains that "resilience research is focused on studying those who engage in life with hope and humor despite devastating losses". It is important to note that resilience is not only about overcoming a deeply stressful situation, but also coming out of the said situation with "competent functioning". Resiliency allows a person to rebound from adversity as a strengthened and more resourceful person. Some characteristics of psychological resilience include: an easy temperament, good self-esteem, planning skills, and a supportive environment inside and outside of the family. Aaron Antonovsky in 1979 stated that when an event is appraised as comprehensible (predictable), manageable (controllable), and somehow meaningful (explainable) a resilient response is more likely.

Process [edit]

Psychological resilience is most commonly understood as a process. It is a tool a person can use and it is something that an individual develops overtime. Others assume it 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 participate in processes that either promote well-being or protect them against the overwhelming influence of relative risk. This research could be used in support of psychological resilience being a process rather than a trait. Resilience is seen as something to develop. Making it something to pursue and not an endpoint.

Ray Williams (Canadian businessman and author) saw that resilience comes from people able to effectively cope with their environment. He believed that there are three basic ways individuals could react when faced with a difficult situation.

1. Respond with anger or aggression
2. Become overwhelmed and shut down.
3. Feel the emotion about the situation and appropriately handle the emotion.

The third option is the one he believed that truly helps an individual promote wellness. Individuals that follow this pattern are people who show resilience. Their resilience comes from coping with the situation. People who follow the first and second option tend to label themselves as victims of their circumstance or they may blame others for their misfortune. They do not effectively cope with their environment, they become reactive, and they tend to cling to negative emotions. This often makes it difficult to focus on problem solving or bounce back. Those that are more resilient will respond to their conditions by coping, bouncing back, and looking for a solution. Along with continual coping methods, William believed that the resilience process can be aided by good environments. These environments include supportive social environments (such as families, communities, schools) and social policies.

While resilience can be viewed as a developmental process (the process of developing resilience), recent contributions to the literature have started to treat personal resilience as indicated by a response process. In this approach, the effects of an event or stressor on a situationally relevant indicator variable are studied, distinguishing immediate responses from dynamic responses and recovery pattern. This view of 'resilience as process' is rooted in the notion of 'actually bouncing back' as it can be observed from how individuals respond to a stressor and how they subsequently recover. As a first response to a stressor, namely, more resilient people will show some (but less strongly than less resilient individuals) increase in stress. Additionally, the speed with which this response levels off over time (e.g., during next hours or days) to return to pre-stressor or pre-event levels can be seen as indicative of an individual's resilience.

Measurements

Direct measurement[edit]

The evaluation of resilience traits centers on personal qualities that reflect individuals' overall approach and response to negative experiences. Trait resilience is typically assessed using two methods: direct evaluation of traits through resilience measures, and proxy assessment of resilience, where related psychological constructs are used to explain resilient outcomes.

The evaluation of resilience traits through direct assessment has been facilitated by the creation of various measures for trait resilience. At present, there are more than 30 resilience measures that assess over 50 different variables related to resilience, but there is no universally accepted 'gold standard' for measuring resilience.

Five established measures of self-report psychological resilience (by way of receiving the most citations that have been posited to assess resilience traits (albeit described as traits, characteristics, or personal qualities):

• Ego Resiliency Scale. The Ego Resilency Scale measures an individual's ability to exercise control over their impulses or inhibition in response to environmental demands, with the aim of maintaining or enhancing their ego equilibrium.
• The Hardiness Scale. The construct of hardiness encompasses three main dimensions: (1) commitment (a conviction that life has purpose), (2) control (confidence in one's ability to navigate life), and (3) challenge (aptitude for and pleasure in adapting to change)
• The Psychological Resilience Scale. The Psychological Resilience Scale assesses a 'resilience core' characterized by five traits (purposeful life, perseverance, self-reliance, equanimity, and existential aloneness) that reflect an individual's physical and mental resilience throughout their lifespan
• The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. The Connor-Davidson Resilience scale was developed in a clinical treatment setting that conceptualized resilience as arising from four factors: (1) control, commitment, and change hardiness constructs
• The Brief Resilience Scale. The Brief Resilience Scale consists of a solitary factor aimed at assessing resilience as the capacity to bounce back from unfavorable circumstances.

The Resilience Systems Scales were produced to investigate the underlying structure of the 115 items from these five most commonly cited trait resilience scales in the literature (The Ego Resiliency Scale, The Hardiness Scale, The Psychological Resilience Scale, The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, and The Brief Resilience Scale. Three strong latent factors underpinned the items on these five resilience measures that replicated ecological systems theory. These three factors are:

• Engineering resilience: The capability of a system to quickly and effortlessly restore itself to a stable equilibrium state after a disruption, as measured by its speed and ease of recovery.
• Ecological resilience: The capacity of a system to endure or resist disruptions while preserving a steady state and adapting to necessary changes in its functioning.
• Adaptive Capacity: The ability to continuously adjust functions and processes in order to be ready to adapt to any disruption.

The Resilient Systems Scales measures these three core systems, and accounts for most of the variance accounted for by the five most popular resilience scales.

Proxy' measurement[edit]

Resilience literature identifies five main trait domains that describe resilience outcomes. The proxy assessment of resilience traits is primarily focussed around the concept of a stress-buffering approach.

The first domain is personality, where a resilient personality includes positive expressions of the five-factor personality traits such as high emotional stability, extraversion, conscientiousness, openness, and agreeableness.

The second domain is cognitive abilities and executive functions, where resilience is identified through effective use of executive functions and processing of experiential demands, or through an overarching cognitive mapping system that integrates information from current situations, prior experience, and goal-driven processes.

The third domain is affective systems, which include emotional regulation systems. Emotion regulation systems are based on the broaden-and-build theory, where there is a reciprocal relationship between trait resilience and positive emotional functioning through emotional management, coping, and regulation achieved by means of attention control, cognitive reappraisal, and coping strategies.

The fourth domain is Eudaimonic well-being in which resilience emerges from natural well-being processes (e.g. autonomy, purpose in life, environmental mastery) and underlying genetic and neural substrates and acts as a protective resilient factor across life-span transitions.

The fifth domain is health systems, which also reflects the broaden-and-build theory, where there is a reciprocal relationship between trait resilience and positive health functioning through the promotion of feeling able to deal with adverse health situations.

Mixed model[edit]

There is evidence that a mixed model of resilience can be found from direct and proxy measures of resilience, In considering latent factors among 61 direct and proxy resilience assessments, findings suggest four main factors: recovery, sustainability, adaptability, and social cohesion.

• Recovery. Resilience scales that focus on recovery, such as engineering resilience, align with reports of stability in emotional and health systems. To contextualize this within a theoretical framework, the most fitting approach is to utilize the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. This theory highlights how positive emotions can foster resilient health systems and enable individuals to recover from setbacks.
• Sustainability. Resilience scales that reflect "sustainability," such as engineering resilience, align with conscientiousness, lower levels of dysexecutive functioning, and five dimensions of eudemonic well-being. To understand this in a theoretical context, the most appropriate approach is to define resilience as the effective use of executive functions and processing of experiential demands (also known as resilient functioning), where an overarching cognitive mapping system integrates information from current situations, prior experience, and goal-driven processes (known as the cognitive model of resilience).
• Adaptability resilience. Resilience scales that assess adaptability, such as adaptive capacity, are primarily associated with higher levels of extraversion (such as being enthusiastic, talkative, assertive, and gregarious) and openness-to-experience (such as being intellectually curious, creative, and imaginative). These personality factors are often reported to form a higher-order factor known as "beta" or "plasticity", which reflect a drive for growth, agency, and reduced inhibition by preferring new and diverse experiences while reducing fixed patterns of behavior. These findings suggest that adaptability can be seen as a complement to growth, agency, and reduced inhibition.
• Social cohesion.  There is convergence between several resilience measures that provide evidence of an underlying social cohesion factor, in which social support, care, and cohesion among family and friends (as featured in various scales within the literature) converge to form a single latent factor.

These findings point to the possibility of adopting a ‘mixed model’ of resilience in which direct assessments of resilience alongside cognate psychological measures could be employed to improve the evaluation of resilience.

References

Herrman, Helen, et al. "What is Resilience?" The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry / La Revue canadienne de psychiatrie 56.5 (2011): 258-65. ProQuest. Web. 8 June 2023.

Instructor Feedback

Thank you for meeting with us today.