Resilienz als sozialer Prozess

Abstract

The aim of this article is to depict challenges and possibilities of the term resilience. The effective methods to promote resilience after traumatic events are discussed on the basis of a case example. One problematic aspect of the definition is the description of resilience as individual and innate trait. In contrast to this individualistic approach, we prefer an understanding of resilience as a collective process, considering resilience as the ability of groups and communities to re-access resources after adverse events in order to "bounce" back to normality. As a second problematic aspect, the term "normality" has to be seen as critical, especially because affected people do not return to the familiar normality after adverse events. Instead they have to find a new form of normality, defined as the ability and the possibility to cope with the new form of everyday life and to find psychological and physicalwell-being in spite of the loss that has taken place. Using examples from interventions after traumatic events drawn from psychosocial emergency care, the five empirically supported factors of resilience are depicted: safety, connectedness, self- and collective efficacy, stress reduction and hope.