Early Life and the Development of Resilience

Can J Psychiatry. 2011;56(8):445-446. Resilience involves resistance to the negative effects of tragic loss, serious failure or insult, or disturbance of the available social frame. Such experiences may be brought on by loss of valued relationships, abilities or functional level, or sources of support, and is likely to be reflected in symptomatic increase in mental disorder. Thus resilience as an issue is critical at one time or another in a probable large majority of human lives; it refers to the ability to cope with life's nontrivially difficult or unpleasant tasks, situations, or experiences with attitudes and actions that minimize or overcome their negative effects. Such coping involves strategies that include reasonable evaluation of the situation, weighing alternative actions, mechanisms of self-control and confidence, obtaining interpersonal comfort and collaboration, and other help seeking. Abilities to employ such strategies vary among individuals, as does the sensitivity to different kinds of negative experiences. Although these differences are likely influenced by genetic variation, social interactions that shape their development begin in the immediate postnatal period,' when the neonate seeks comfort, warmth, and nourishment. Neonatal offspring of depressed mothers are less responsive to social stimuli2 and biological indicators of these early behaviours1 may be early signs of nonresilient patterns of processing social-behavioural options. In the pre-school period, and increasingly thereafter, children need to understand the origins of their own emotional reactions to positive and negative experiences, as well as those of their peers.4 This understanding will arise from frequent and positive interaction with parents, siblings, and (or) other caretakers, and, normatively, will develop into skills for communicating appropriately with peers. Such understanding and skills may well serve as a basis for resilience in the face of a range of problematic experiences, peers, or negative environments. The papers in this section5,6 provide evidence regarding environmental and developmental processes in later childhood that may promote such resilience. In the first paper, by Dr Jeffrey G Johnson and colleagues,5 substantial and positive parenting during the developmental years, by either or both parents in a general population sample, is shown to be related to a much lower rate not only of the DSM Axis I disorders into young adulthood but also of the personality disorders, which themselves indicate problems in likely resilience skills. The second study, by Dr Stephanie D Stepp and colleagues,6 shows that social competence among inner-city boys as they begin adolescence serves as a protection over time to ongoing exposure to the problematic behaviour and minimized academic efforts that characterize many of their peers in low-income neighbourhoods. Again, this study6 suggests the importance of early training in the understanding of the emotional reactions of peers, as well as one's own, and reinforcement of constructive responses both to peer and to adult expectations. It is likely that these relatively resilient children may also have experienced more positive parenting than those in the same study who failed to show resilient outcomes, but such data were not part of these analyses. …

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