Topic > Protective factors and implications of resilience

IndexThe roots of resilienceProtective factors and implications of resilienceConclusionThe term resilience literally means "recovering" from adverse conditions. Resilience as a concept can be viewed from two different perspectives: resilience as a personal trait and resilience as a process. Resilience can be described as a relatively stable personal characteristic or set of characteristics, which not only develops from life's adversities but also grows from the experience of daily stress. From this definition it is clear that resilience increases the chances of struggling in difficult circumstances. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Resilience can be considered to occur if the person rapidly returns to a previous state following trauma or negative life events. According to Masten and Reed (2002), resilience refers to a class of phenomena characterized by patterns of positive adaptation in a context of significant adversity or risk. Resilience must be inferred, because two main judgments are needed to identify individuals as belonging to this class of phenomena. First, there is a judgment that individuals are “doing well” or better than good relative to a set of behavioral expectations. Second, there is a judgment that there were extenuating circumstances that posed a threat to the good results. Therefore, the study of this class of phenomena requires the definition of criteria or methods to ascertain good adaptation and the past or current presence of conditions that pose a threat to good adaptation. Overall, there has been a trend in resilience research from defining it as a trait to viewing it as a dynamic process. The transition from the personal trait-based approach to the process-based approach is based on a number of factors such as, for example, that resilience is a broad topic approach, its meaning can only be derived from its relationship to specific conditions and specific deliverables. Furthermore, the “process” approach gives researchers more insight into understanding the “dynamic and interactive” nature of the process, in which protective mechanisms of protective factors operate and change to promote positive outcomes in negative circumstances. It has both theoretical and practical implications for resilience-based interventions.” The Roots of Resilience The idea of ​​individual resilience in the face of adversity has been around for a long time, as evident in myths, fairy tales, art and literature over the years. centuries portraying heroes and heroines. When psychology began to develop as a systematic science in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was clearly an interest in individual adaptation to the environment, which can be seen in theories ranging from natural selection to the psychoanalytic psychology of I. Freud (1928), for example, noted the extraordinary human capacity to triumph over adversity even on the path to execution, describing gallows humor as “the ego's victorious assertion of its own invulnerability.” , competence, and self-efficacy in 20th-century psychology focused on the positive aspects of developmental adaptation. In 1962, Lois Murphy deplored the negative focus of research on individual differences in children: “It is almost a paradox that a nation which has exulted in its rapid expansion and its scientific and technological achievements should have developed such extensive studies of childhood . a 'problematic' literature”. Murphy's words were a harbinger of change. A decade later, the studysystematic analysis of resilience in psychology emerged from the study of children at risk of problems and psychopathologies. A year later, the same group of researchers created tools to examine the systems that support the development of resilience. Some of these investigators were struck by the realization that there were children supposedly at high risk for problems who were developing quite well. Subsequently, these psychiatrists and psychologists began to write and talk about the meaning of these children. Their observations were a call to action for research into the phenomenon of doing well in a risk context. In the 1970s, Emmy Werner was one of the first scientists to use the term resilience. Resilience also emerged as an important theoretical and research topic from studies conducted on children with mothers diagnosed with schizophrenia in the 1980s. The main area of ​​research on resilience, since its inception, has been that of protective factors that explain people's adaptation to adverse conditions such as maltreatment, urban poverty or miserable life events. Finally, conceptions of resilience as absolute or global, as opposed to relative or even circumscribed have changed over the years. In some early writings, those who fared well despite multiple risks were labeled “invulnerable.” This term was misleading because it implied that risk avoidance was absolute and immutable. As research has evolved, it has become clear that positive adaptation despite exposure to adversity involves a developmental progression, such that new vulnerabilities and/or strengths often emerge as life circumstances change. Therefore, the term “resilient” is primarily used to describe high-risk children who succeed. Protective Factors and Resilience Protective factors are defined as characteristics of the child, family, and broader environment that reduce the negative effect of adversity on child outcomes. A number of factors, including children's IQ, emotion regulation, parenting, low parental disagreement, advantaged SES, effective schools, and safe neighborhoods, are associated with positive outcomes in a high-risk context . Protective factors refer to characteristics of people or circumstances that predict better outcomes in high-risk conditions; in fact, they can be defined as resources that matter when risk or adversity is high. Examples include support from caregivers and peers and strong social-emotional skills. Protective factors can be identified by two main approaches, namely variable-based analysis and person-based analysis. In variable-based analyses, researchers take the help of multivariate regressions to examine continuous scales of adversity and risk modifiers, in relation to their outcomes and to investigate whether it is a main effect or an interaction effect. One of the first efforts to use this variable-based approach was the groundbreaking paper by Garmezy, Masten, and Tellegen (1984), which demonstrated that high IQ was protective: Increases in life stress appeared to affect intelligent children much less than their short children. Peers with IQ. In person-based analyses, comparisons are made between a group of children classified based on their final outcomes and risk profiles. In both variable-based and person-based analyses, a hallmark of the current generation of resilience research is the focus on process: if studies truly want to be informative for interventions, they must go beyond simpleidentification of variables linked to competence towards understanding the specific underlying mechanisms. Regarding risk transmission, for example, maternal depression can affect children through various environmental processes, including negative family interactions and routines and child behavioral and emotional problems. Similarly, protective factors such as high-quality caregiver-child relationships could benefit a child through multiple pathways, including feelings of being supported, a sense of being loved as an individual, and a strong set of personal values. Individual-level protective factors are personal characteristics, traits, and resources, such as personality traits, intellect, self-efficacy, coping skills, good cognitive skills, adaptable personality, attention span, self-regulation, good sense of humor, easy-going temperament, evaluation of maltreatment and life satisfaction. Family-level protective factors include adequate financial resources and supportive relationships, such as family cohesion, stable care, loving parental relationships, minimal conflict, an organized home environment, and spousal support. Community-level protective factors include easy access to resources, effective schools, peer relationships, relationships with nonfamily members, social support and neighborhoods with high collective efficacy, involvement in social organizations, availability of health care, and religion. Longitudinal and cross-sectional research studies provide evidence of links between protective factors and resilience. In terms of protective processes, positive peer relationships and academic engagement can mitigate the deleterious effects of maltreatment. Furthermore, the protective potential of positive parenting is evident not only in early childhood but also in later years, through adolescence and even emerging adulthood. . Among children exposed to harsh maternal parenting, for example, high levels of grandmother involvement may reduce the risk of maladjustment in grandchildren. Studies have documented the benefits of early exposure to high-quality child care, in which caregivers have positive personal characteristics and offer emotionally supportive care. Even in later years, supportive relationships with teachers in primary and secondary schools can be protective. Positive relationships with peers serve as an important protective factor. Peer-assisted learning can result in significant increases in achievement, and affiliation with peers who model responsible behavior (e.g., good students and good citizens) can mitigate, to some extent, the effects of exposure to violence. In addition to peers, social aspects are particularly important. organizational processes in the neighborhood, which involve characteristics such as high levels of cohesion, sense of belonging to the community, supervision of young people by adults in the community and high participation in local organizations. Such social processes can help mitigate the impact of structural community characteristics such as poverty or violence, for example, by providing opportunities for structured and supervised extracurricular activities. Studies of several at-risk groups find that individuals with high IQ tend to fare better than others, with underlying mechanisms potentially involving superior problem-solving skills as well as a history of success (e.g., at school or work) in time. Among adults, Fiedler (1995) reported that people with high IQ showed success in leadership under conditions of low stress, but that when stress was.