Afifi - resilience

So, resilience is one of those terms that is sort of difficult to define. It’s even more difficult to measure in in research. But to me, when I think of resilience, I think of when children experience maltreatment, it increases the likelihood of negative outcomes. But fortunately, not all children will experience these negative outcomes, which makes us believe that some children might be more resilient. So that’s where I sort of couch the overall concepts of resilience. 

And then to think about what does that mean to be resilient? I think it’s important to think of resilience as the absence of bad things. So that could be you don’t have anxiety disorders or depression or think about suicide, but also the presence of good things. So that you have, in addition to the absence of these negative outcomes, you also have high psychological well-being as well. So, you have to have the both of those things I think, are important to be considered resilient.