The concept of psychological resilience has derived its origin quite recently. In the 1970's group of developmental scientists started study of children who succeeded in life despite severe adversities. These children who triumphed in the face of such massive developmental insults were referred to as and their stories captivated the interests of clinician's, researchers and lay people as well. Resilience is supposed to act like buffer when an individual is confronted with stressor and thereby it is supposed to promote stress coping. Resilience generally refers to a class of phenomena characterized by pattern of positive in the context of significant (Masten & Reed, 2002).In general, psychological resilience is the capacity to bounce back after adversity. It is the ability to survive stress or risk factor and to avoid two or more life outcomes to which majority of the normative survivors of this stressor would have succumbed. Two major judgments are taken into consideration to identify people as resilient .First ,that individuals are or better than okay with respect to set of expectations for behavior. Second, the judgment that there have been extenuating circumstances that posed threat to outcomes. Therefore, the study of this class of phenomena requires defining the criteria or for ascertaining and the past or current presence of conditions that pose threat to (Masten & Reed, 2002).Scholars agree that risk or adversity must be present for person to be considered resilient. Despite this agreement among researchers, there is considerable controversy regarding the universality of protective factors (Harvey & Delfabbro, 2004) and the extent to which children are doing okay according to the criteria of (Luthar, Cicchetti & Becker, 2000; Masten, 1999; Wang & Gordon, 1994). Thus although long list of protective factors have been identified, there are marked differences in the degree to which these factors protect or how well these factors facilitate positive outcomes along with variations in how and when people call upon particular resources when facing risks and disadvantages (Harvey & Delfabbro, 2004).When determining resilient child's level of post-threat functioning, observers are looking for recovery of normal functioning, that is, attainment of developmental milestones and/ or evidence for excellence (functioning that is that is above or beyond that expected of child of similar age).Regarding good adaptation resilience researchers agree that 'external adaptation' (meeting the social, educational and occupational expectations of society) is necessary in order to determine who is resilient. The network of researchers is split however, on whether determination of 'internal adaptation' (positive psychological well-being) is necessary as well (Masten & Reed, 2002). Findings from wide-ranging and diverse literature, on resilience in children and youth converge with striking regularity on set of individual and environmental attributes associated with adjustment and development under variety of lifethreatening circumstances across cultural contexts. The most striking conclusion arising from all the research on resilience in development is that the extraordinary resilience and recovery power of children comes or arises from ordinary processes. The evidence suggests that the children who make it have basic human protective systems operating in their favor. Resilience does not come from rare and special qualities but from the operations of ordinary human systems, arising from brains, minds, bodies of children, from their relationship in the family and community and from school, religious and other communities. A list of salient protective factors has been forwarded by the most prominent researchers in this area in the 1970's an si 980's (Anthony, 1974: Garmezy, 1971, 1974, 1985; Masten, 1989; Masten & Garmezy, 1985; Murphy, 1974; Murphy & Moriarty, 1976; Rutter, 1979, 1985; Sameroff & Chandler, 1975; Wemer & Smith, 1982) and has held up remarkably well since that time (Cicchetti & Garmezy, 1993; Egeland, Carlson & Sroufe, 1993;LutharZ Lutharetal. …
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Jun 6, 2013
Sarah J Beal + 1
Open Access
