Risk and Resilience in Psychology - Essay Example

Resilience In psychology resilience means the positive attitude of people towards stress and tragedy. It is also used in dealing with any form of unpleasant occurrence and determines the resistance of an individual. This is to say that Resilience is the combined form of a defensive shield against all the combined adverse consequences. In the study of psychology we often come across the term “risk and resilience”. Most frequent terms bearing the same meaning in psychology are "resilience", "psychological resilience", "emotional resilience", "hardiness", and "resourcefulness" (Devenson, 2003). As per definition resilience is an active course of action that individuals show in form of positive attitude in adverse or untoward circumstances. Resilience is based upon two facts one being exposure of the individual to misfortune and the other being the individuals reaction towards it and that too in the positive sense. Adversity involves all the adverse consequences associated with untoward happenings and the resulting adjustment problems like poverty, children of schizophrenic mothers, or experiences of the 9/11 attacks. Contrary to this the Positive attitude is one which shows attainment and accomplishment of a best possible outcome against a challenging task in life , for example after the September 11th terrorism attacks on the United States there was absence of psychological anguish (Flach, 2004). In 1970 Werner & Smith (2001) introduced the term Resilience for the first time. She studied a group of children originating from Kauai (Hawaiian Islands). The island being poor, majority of its children belonged to alcoholic or mentally deranged parents. Also amongst the parents the majority were unemployed. Werner & Smith (2001) observed that two thirds of the children who were brought up under these circumstances showed negative behaviour at reaching later teen age, this included histories of unemployment, out of wed lock birth involving teenage girls, and abuse. Despite all this there was still one third of these who did not show any sign of negative attitude. This group minus the negative attitude was named resilient. These children and their families possessed different characteristics compared to the non- resilient ones and their families. In the 1980s another area of research was debated upon which was resilience and many theories were presented taking into consideration children of schizophrenic mothers (Werner & Smith, 2001). Masten’s study was of the view point that children born of schizophrenic children received little or no attention and the care required was absent compared to those of healthy parents, and this consequently resulted in their unhealthy development. Yet still out of these unhealthy environments some children showed excellent behaviour and proved academically challenging and competent which further led the researchers dig into the resultant nature of these two entirely different behavioural aspects .In the beginning of the research conducted on these children the primary focus remained on the factors that were of help to these children facing maltreatment, catastrophic life events, or urban poverty and the reasons of their adaptation. The target of the empirical work shifted to the understanding of the hidden factors involved in producing individuals with positive attitudes even in adverse conditions (Taylor & Wang, 2000). Individuals showing resilient characteristics are likely to adjust fully even in adverse environments that hinder their normal development, the factors being low socioeconomic status, poverty, schizophrenic parents. Adding to these the failure of academic achievements and emotional as well as behavioural setbacks. All the negative factors can coexist multiplying the risks when added together. When such situations arise and as per on the result of a study conducted, the resilient children somehow pulled through remarkably doing well for themselves and faced no behavioural problems and functioned well in society (Devenson, 2003). Moreover they had active response and proved healthy in every way. However the reason behind this positive attitude was credited to good parenting and positive school experiences. Resilience is also a measure of handling of stressful conditions and pulling through .We take the example of divorce where individuals facing emotional stressful conditions somehow manage to combat and sustain. The research done on children whose parents go through this dilemma of emotional upheaval responded differently on basis of sex. Boys had more behaviour problems than girls as the girls had the good exposure by their mothers in terms of support compared to boys (Devenson, 2003). Divorce may provide some negative outcomes in an individual but yet the children of single parents prove more responsible and helping than children of healthy homes. Here the protective factors underlying are the supportive attitudes of adults during or after stress and then motivating them to fit in their new life style. Lastly of Resilience it can be said that it is a recovery from prolonged illness that is the adverse conditions in this case. Here we do not regard resilience to vulnerability (Taylor & Wang, 2000). Individuals who undergo shock, may for some time have problem sleeping or show anxiety but with time they start to recover to being normal again. With this we conclude that it is also the time age and the supportive attitudes of people around an individual that helps speed recovery. Buffalo Creek dam disaster, for example, had longer effects on older children than on younger in addition to , children who were supported by their families showed fewer symptoms (e.g., dreams of personal death) that Chowchilla incident resulted in than troubled families (Taylor & Wang, 2000). In combating the negative effects two factors play an important part. They being vulnerability and protectiveness .The first of the two factors incorporates the negative effect aggregation in adverse situations. For example children who are not as much intelligent as compared to others are prone to be affected by the negative circumstances more .One protective factor however negates the negative circumstances to show such individuals hope and produce confidence by means of social support. Werner and Smith(2001) observed that positive factors existed in (A) personal qualities like socializing, vivacious, positive thinking. (B) Family meaning having emotionally stable and strong parents and having close bondage with at least one of the family members. (C) Community meaning ones who provided support and gave strength or advised them. Apart from all this the research on resilience also digs into the individual differences. How an individual adapts directly involves one’s self esteem, control on conscious thinking, and ego-resiliency. For example, children with a high self esteem when undergo maltreatment they do not form negative opinions or wrong perceptions rather they tend to rationalize the situation by thinking about it in a positive prospective. The control over conscious thinking is the attribute of an individual by which he acts in a specific manner- which reflects on how they feel and desire (Flach, 2004). Ego-resilience is the energetic productivity of an individual to change his or her control over conscious thinking. Children who were maltreated and underwent adverse environments showed little ego- resilience and intelligence that the children who had healthy environments. The maltreated children show high levels of aggressive behaviours, withdrawls, problems of attitude and disorder. How these children adjusted in society is dependent upon the positive self-esteem of the individual and also the ego resiliency. Demographic information also provides a tool in predicting resilience. After the 911 attacks women came up with lesser resilience than men (Flach, 2004). Additional to this people who had no link to organizations did not show much resilience. Many researchers studied resilience in Vietnam War Veterans and came to the conclusion that social support proved to be a major factor contributing to resilience. They were of the view point that there were several protective factors of which the following contributed the following factors protecting against the development of PTSD: PREMILITARY FACTORS Japanese-American ethnicity, high school degree or college education, old age at entry to war higher socioeconomic status positive paternal relationship POSTMILITARY FACTORS Social support at homecoming current social support Factors involved in the maintenance of PTSD are PREMILITARY FACTORS Native Hawaiian or papanese-American ethnicity college education POSTMILITARY FACTORS Current social support According to some studies resilience was found to be closely knit into positive emotion. Many researchers studied the role of positive emotion in resilience and found widows with greater amount of resilience to undergo greater amount of emotions than the women with low levels of resilience. There was a greater level of emotion thereby meaning women with greater resilience possessed the knack of differentiation between positive and negative emotional states while facing stressful conditions (Devenson, 2003). It may also be considered that the emotional state also contributed to the adaptive nature of resilient people. The widows especially with high resilience used the adaptive occurrences at times of stress to help themselves combat with their daily traumatic occurrences. So in short the positive emotions proved vital as far as combating with daily stress was concerned. Although there are studies done that are of the view point that the positive emotions in people helps them to build up psychological ways that they use later at the time of stress and to fight against any negative daily situation like the 9/11 episode (Devenson, 2003). Therefore it can be easily said that it is this very positive emotion of the individuals that help them to recover in stressful conditions and bounce back to their normal routines. So saying we can also say that it proves to be a protective factor in adverse circumstances of individuals with greater levels of resilience. Another study also lays claim that the positive emotions are active elements within resilience. This was done by studying subjects of the 9/11 episode (Devenson, 2003). The positive emotions helped them recoil and proved as a buffer in helping them come out of the situation. From amongst these people it was the individuals with greater levels of resilience that coped better like they felt lucky to be alive .They had less attacks of depression and were encouraged by their positive emotions to move on. High resilient people also are less likely to smoke cigarettes or use drugs whereas the individuals with low resilience are very sensitive to any form of stress and believe circumstances to have no end and so experience greater levels of stress and often are likely to take refuge in forms of drugs (Taylor & Wang, 2000). There are a majority of social and ethnic groups that show resilience. Like the children of the children of European Jews in the United States, the children of the Vietnamese boat people in the United States. Middle class families in times of the great depression, children of farmers in times of economical crisis, children of Spanish and Vietnamese immigrants in Germany, adoptive children, who went through trauma and malnutrition. They all show high resilience and this very factor keeps them going and cope with their daily lives, the positive factor helping them see things positively and in a different perspective. Works Cited: Devenson, A. 2003. Resilience. Allen & Unwin. Flach, F. 2004. Resilience: Discovering a New Strength at Times of Stress. The Hatherleigh Company. Taylor, R. & Wang, M. 2000. Resilience Across Contexts: Family, Work, Culture, and Community. Lawrence Erlbaum. Werner, E. & Smith, R. 2001. Journeys from Childhood to Midlife: Risk, Resilience, and Recovery. Cornell University Press. Read More