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Resilience Research Paper

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When faced with severe and extreme circumstances, most people tend to adapt and achieve some balance in their lives, this has been called “resilience” (Bonanno, 2004). Despite nuances in the concept of of resilience, there is a general consensus to define it as a phenomenon or process that reflects a relative positive adaptation despite contexts of risks significant adversity, or trauma (Luthar, 2006). Whereas some experts consider thet, after having undergone an adverse experience, especially in old age, maintaining one’s physical and cognitive functions are sufficient indicators of resilience ( Greve and Staudinger, 2006), other investigators believe that, in order to consider a response resilient, there should be “improvement” or “growth” …show more content…

Resilience has been studied from diverse perspectives, such as displaying adequate development despite a series of risk factors that pose a threat to such development, functioning well under adverse conditions, or recovering normal functioning after a disaster or adversity (Masten, 2007). The theoretical postures and ways of understanding resilience are also different because they consider it either in personality trait or dynamic process. For the former perspective, resilience is a trait that is fixed and stable over time, and the main research goal is to determine the individual differences that may explain why some individuals perform better than others in adverse contexts ( Campbell-sill et al.,2006). The second perspective considers resilience as a stage resulting from the combination of diverse protection and risk factors, that is, a dynamic process that “protects” the individual any moment of one’s lifetime and can change as function of one’s personal, family, and social resources, as well as of one’s context and

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