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Resilience, Adversity, and Social Supports in Childhood and Adolescence: History
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Contributor: Val Livingston , Breshell Jackson-Nevels , Brandon D. Mitchell , Phillip M. Riddick

More than 50 years ago, children were viewed as naturally resilient and often labeled invulnerable or invincible. Resilience is now understood to be the result of dynamic interactions between individual, familial, social, and environmental systems, decentralizing the focus from the individual to the global society. Experiences with adversity may emanate from the youth’s family environment, their community, the school system, and larger structural challenges related to poverty, discrimination, health disparities, and educational inequities. Youth experiences with adversity, trauma, and tragedy have the potential to negatively impact youth well-being, with consequences manifesting across the lifespan. Children and adolescents generally hold limited power to change their circumstances and are often ill-equipped to resolve the adverse or traumatic experiences occurring within their ecosystem. The value of social supports in the young person’s ability to be resilient has been affirmed. This understanding is particularly important for children growing up in poverty or in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) where significant challenges occur as a result of economic and social disadvantage. Resilience at the individual level is unlikely to eliminate macrolevel issues. Developing and deploying strategies to enhance the ability of youth to rebound from adversity represents a positive step at the micro level, but the larger issues of economic and social disadvantage are unlikely to change without macro-level interventions. Glancing toward the future, traumatized youth may grow into traumatized adults without appropriate interventions and changes in social policies, programs, and protections.

  • resilience
  • well-being
  • adversity
  • childhood trauma
  • social and economic disadvantage
  • coping and problem-solving skills
Children are generally dependent upon adults to address their basic needs of food, water, shelter, and clothing. As minors, they exist in a reality where they experience few opportunities to make life-altering decisions, such as engage in legally binding agreements, acquire independent housing, or obtain full-time jobs. Young people generally rely on their families for safety and support when they encounter experiences that threaten their well-being. How youth cope with adversity or challenges can result in positive or negative outcomes, resilience, or pathology. Family has often been acknowledged as a vital source of resilience for individuals, particularly children and adolescents [1][2][3][4]. Contrarily, family has also been identified as a source of adversity [5]. A glance toward the future global society highlights the importance of understanding how and why child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) functions as an essential component for global mental health [5][6]. CAMH is influenced by several factors, one of which is the child’s ability to be resilient when encountering adversity, a valuable skill in adulthood [3]. When unresolved, a child or adolescent with mental health concerns may develop into an adult with mental health concerns. Similarly, resilient children are likely to grow into resilient adults, enhancing their ability to contribute positively to society.
The concept of resilience is rooted in child psychiatry and developmental psychology, offering an explanation of how some children were able to thrive after traumatic experiences while others were not [7]. Over several decades, resilience research evolved from examining childhood adversity to identifying protective factors and processes that enable individuals to thrive despite experiences of trauma and adversity. Once thought to be an inherent trait, extant research has enhanced understanding of resilience as a skill that can be learned or acquired. Currently in the fourth wave of resilience research, attention has moved beyond individual approaches to examinations at the societal and ecological levels.
This discourse will examine definitions, theories, types, and models of resilience to illuminate both the value of resilience and how resilience develops naturally or may be developed intentionally. Utilizing a critical lens, case examples involving developed and developing countries will be explored to further clarify how youth experiences with adversity may be buffered via social supports at the family, school, community, and societal levels. Additionally, race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status will be examined to highlight disparities in youth resilience as informed by geographical location (Global South vs. Global North) or status as an LMIC.

Understanding Adversity

Van Breda asserted that adversity could be categorized into two categories: acute and chronic [7]. Acute adversity has a definitive starting point, a short duration, and a limited impact on functioning. Chronic adversity may be subdivided into two groups: distal-onset and proximal-onset. Distal-onset adversity has no clear starting point, indefinite duration, and could include challenges such as poverty and family violence, with the challenges impacting birth through adulthood. For racial/ethnic groups, traumatic experiences associated with racism and discrimination reflect cultural aspects of distal-onset adversity [7]. Proximal-onset adversity has an identified starting point, continues for a significant period of time, and affects many areas of life; this could include natural disasters or war. Understanding the nature and duration of the adversity provides insight into the severity of the impact and how some children appear to recover faster from adversity than others.
Commencing in the 1970s amid growing concerns for the future, researchers have maintained a strong focus regarding the impact of natural disasters, war, climate change, pandemics, and poverty on the global mental health of children and how these adverse experiences impact human development over a lifetime [3][5][8][9]. The severity of adversity as well as the availability of resources to assist children in resolving challenges are time-dependent; specifically, whether or not the challenges occur during key developmental periods. For example, the toxic stress resulting from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) alters gene expression, negatively impacting brain development and the development of self-regulation skills [3][5][8]. Under this scenario, one’s ability to be resilient may be significantly impacted and ineffective in countering biological processes.

Resilience: Individual vs. Societal Responsibility

European views of resilience focus on the ability of individuals, communities, and societies to adapt to and recover from shocks and crises while undergoing challenging transitions. The primary criticism of this perspective is that it fails to consider context and culture: the historical impact of colonization, racial discrimination, and/or the intergenerational transmission of trauma. Many decolonized countries, such as Haiti, South Africa, Pakistan, Malawi, and others, continue to experience challenges to societal well-being, suggesting the need for societal resilience [6]. The issue of individual responsibility vs. structural inequality appears to be a point of contention with regard to resilience [7][10][11][12]. Mavelli asserted that neoliberalist perspectives on resilience affirm individual responsibility for social and economic security, suggesting that income-insecure individuals should accept a lifetime exposure to adversity and adapt to unpredictable and potentially traumatic challenges [12]. How does the adaptation to a lifetime of adversity manifest to the public, and under what conditions could such an adaptation be utilized to reflect resilience? The success or failure of such an adaptation is questionable. Resigning oneself to a lifetime of depression, anxiety, and hopelessness is more likely to reflect pathology than resilience. Utilizing a critical lens, the neoliberalist perspective appears to legitimize the social divide between the haves and have-nots, dismissing the needs of disadvantaged communities. If the individual (e.g., child) is solely responsible for their respective well-being, then governments would hold no responsibility for harms incurred from macro-level concerns such as racism, poverty, homelessness, discrimination, crime, health disparities, and economic inequality [7][12][13].
An individual’s ability to appear resilient does not negate the harmful impact of social forces beyond their control [11][13][14]. Children who survive a childhood plagued by adversity often grow into adults with mental and physical health concerns linked to their childhood adversity [5]. Economically disadvantaged Black/African Americans who experience trauma and adversity but appear resilient on the surface have been found to experience significant health concerns in adulthood as a result of their resilience [6]. Bottrell suggested that resilience wells may run dry after repeated risk exposures, leading to a follow-up question: “How much adversity should resilient individuals endure before social arrangements rather than individuals are targeted interventions?” [10] (p. 335). The literature abounds with research affirming the need for macro-level interventions to address macro-level problems affecting the development of youth globally [3][5][7][10][11].

What Is Resilience?

Resilience is a complex phenomenon nuanced by sociocultural and contextual factors, often identified as a protective or promotive factor for people who appear to recover fairly well from traumatic or adverse experiences [3][15]. Definitions of resilience vary depending upon the author and discipline. According to the American Psychological Association, resilience is “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress” [16]. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network defines resilience as “the ability of a child to recover and show early and effective adaptation following a potentially traumatic event” [17]. Walsh described resilience as “the capacity to rebound from adversity strengthened and more resourceful” [18] (p. 4). Fraser et al. defined resilience as “an individual’s ability to adapt to extraordinary circumstances and achieve positive and unexpected outcomes in the face of adversity” [19] (p. 136).
Socioecological perspectives on resilience, such as Ungar’s [20] Socioecological Resilience Theory (SERT), highlight the importance of decentralizing focus from the individual to the broader social and cultural context in which resilience is nurtured. SERT focuses on the interdependence of social and ecological systems and their ability to adapt to disruption. This perspective highlights the importance of understanding the complex interaction between people, the ecosystems they depend on, and how changes in one component could affect the resilience of the entire system. From a developmental systems perspective, resilience is defined as the ability of a system to “adapt successfully to challenges that threaten the function, survival, or future development of the system” [3] (p. 2). This perspective is scalable across systems: individuals, families, schools, communities, and other systems [3]. Despite more than four decades of research, a consensus definition of resilience remains elusive. In layman’s terms, resilience may be viewed as the ability to “bounce back” after experiencing trauma, tragedy, or adversity. The absence of a consensus definition remains a concern, as does the ability to clearly articulate what constitutes successful adaptation or bouncing back. From a critical race perspective, successful adaptation to racism and discrimination may look different for communities of color.

Resilience: As a Process and an Outcome

Resilience may be viewed as both a process and an outcome. Resilience reflects a dynamic process rather than an immutable personal trait [20][21][22][23][24]. The process of resilience suggests the perception of having control over a specific situation [25]. As an outcome, resilience may be viewed as the “stable trajectory of healthy functioning after an adverse or traumatic event” [19] (p. 136). Research affirms that an individual’s ability to be resilient is heavily influenced by risk dosage: cumulative risk exposures or exposure to one extremely traumatic event [3]. Children and adolescents may respond differently to adversity due to insufficient experiences with effective problem-solving and coping abilities. While resilience has been found effective in enhancing an individual’s ability to “bounce back,” exposure to multiple risks has been found to pose too much of a challenge for youth to overcome easily [4].

The Resilient Child

It has often been said that “Children are resilient.” Are children inherently resilient because they physically survive trauma or abuse? Manion, an advocate for traumatized children, posed an important question: “Should children have to be resilient?” [26]. Early research on resilience in children portrayed them as invincible or invulnerable, but current research indicates that much of what was thought to promote resilience in children originates from outside the child [4][21][27]. The literature confirms that a child’s ability to adapt successfully to adversity is facilitated by social supports that influence how well children navigate adversity or trauma [4][7][21]. Close attachment with a caregiver and effective parenting were reported to protect children in ways not located within the child [1][4]. Though children may learn to adapt to situations, this is not the same as resilience, a skill that develops over time through experiences and one’s ability to learn from setbacks [4][17].
Independent of the various perspectives on resilience, important questions emerge: What happens between the traumatic experience and the youth’s ability to “bounce back?” For historically disadvantaged groups consistently plagued by trauma and adversity, what does positive adaptation entail? Does resilience mean that a person is no longer affected by their traumatic experience or that the trauma remains, hidden in the background and unmentioned? Answers to these questions require an examination of resilience theories and models that clearly articulate resilience dynamics.

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/encyclopedia5030108

References

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