WHAT IS RESILIENCE?

DR. M.J. MALINDI

• Resilience was thought to be a characteristic of children who were thought to be:

• Invincible;

• Invulnerable;

• Unshakable;

• Unbeatable;

• Indomitable;

• Impenetrable;

• Unconquerable;

• Indestructible;

We all know… the person whose father was an

alcoholic and whose mother was frequently

hospitalised with a psychiatric disorder, yet who

is now a happy and dedicated family man;

(What made this possible?)

We all know the person who rose from the most

severe deprivation and poverty to become a

competent, caring medical doctor;

(What made this possible?)

We all know the child who was orphaned at a

young age, grew up in children’s homes,

became a juvenile delinquent and then settled

into stable employment and is now a respected

member of his community;

(What made this possible?)

We all know the person who experienced major

discrimination in his youth, was unfairly

imprisoned for many years and then went on to

become an icon of compassion, forgiveness

and dignity;

(What made this possible?)

Of course, we also know people whose lives

have seemed to follow a very different pattern:

individuals who seem to have had every

advantage that life could offer a loving family,

supportive friends, a good education, enough

money and so forth-yet seem unable to become

well-adjusted and productive adults”

(Killian, 2004)

(How do you explain this?

PHYSICS

• The ability of a substance to return to its original shape after it has been pressed or bent

BIOLOGY

• The ability to recover quickly from illness, change, or misfortune; buoyancy.

• The property of a material that enables it to resume its original shape or position after being bent, stretched, or compressed; elasticity

ECONOMICS

• Refers to the inherent and adaptive responses to  hazards that enable individuals and communities to avoid some potential losses.

• It can take place at the level of the firm, household, market, or macroeconomy.

• Resilience is a context-specific term that is not easy to define;

• The ecological perspective (Masten, 2001) sees resilience as:

• positive outcomes despite the experience of adversity/difficulties (being an orphan);

• continued positive or effective functioning in adverse circumstances (sustained poverty),

• recovery after significant trauma

IN PSYCHOLOGY

The social ecology of resilience perspective (Ungar, 2006; Ungar, 2007; Ungar 2008) conceptualises resilience as:

•the capacity of individuals to navigate their way to the resources that sustain well-being;

•the capacity of the individual’s physical and social ecologies to provide resilience resources; and lastly,

•the capacity of individuals, families and communities to negotiate culturally meaningful ways to share resources.

• Resilience is about someone doing well in contexts where the circumstances confronting this person would typically predict poor developmental outcomes or psychopathology (drug abuse, depression, suicide, etc.)

• Resilience is a dynamic process, rather than

a fixed attribute or characteristic one has as previously thought;

• Resilience in children depends on

what is built inside them AND on what is

built around them;

• Individuals are not considered resilient if they have never been exposed to significant risk or threat that threatened to derail their development;

• Only when such threat or risk is present, and

overcome, does the notion of resilience come

into play.

HIDDEN RESILIENCE AND HABITUATION

• For some, life is a long, drawn out, constant, daily struggle for survival;

• Coping is then based on unconventional mechanisms;

• Long suffering brings about habituation

• This so for the following groups of children:

STREET CHILDREN

HOW THEY COPE

• Begging;

• Glue sniffing;

• Petty crime;

• Vandalising payphones;

• Rag-picking;

• Prostitution;

YOUTH AND CIVIL WAR

POVERTY

ABANDONED CHILDREN

NEGLECTED CHILDREN

PROSTITUTION

WHAT ARE THE LESSONS LEARNED

THERE ARE ONLY TWO RULES IN LIFE

RULE NUMBER 1:

RULE NUMBER 2

ALWAYS REMEMBER RULE NUMBER 1

STAY BLESSED

Study Unit 2: Risks to resilience

On the street I saw a small girl,

Cold and shivering in a thin dress,

With little hope of a decent meal.

I became angry and said to God:

Why did you permit this? Why don’t

you do something about it?

For a while God said nothing. That night

He replied quite suddenly:

“I certainly did something about it,

I made you.”

(Anonymous: submitted by Mary Rose McGeady-Covenant House)

Picture from: Children First (2005)

WHAT ARE RISK PROCESSES• Generally, the term, risk refers to individual/personal

and environmental factors or processes that

combine to increase the individual’s

likelihood of negative developmental

outcomes in children;• Risk refers to the variables that interact/work

together to bring about poor adjustment or psychopathology;

• Risk processes do not directly cause adjustment problems, but typically encourage poor adjustment in the presence of other risks.

• Risks can have a cumulative effect

• Risk originates from multiple stressors rather than from single individual or environmental processes;

• Personal and/or environmental risks may have a cumulative effect on an individual and this cumulative effect is associated with non-resilient outcomes;

• Risks should be understood as chains of events, or processes, rather than singular events or negative episodes;

• Some risks can be related to the biological make-up of a child. For example, sensory-motor deficits which affect the ability to learn and explore the environment and unusual sensitivities, low birth weight, age and poor memory are implicated in the development of poor adjustment;

• Risk processes are context-specific rather than universal;

• Risks can be personal/individual, in relationships, in the community and part of a culture

PERSONAL/INDIVIDUAL LEVEL• Difficult personality;• Biological make-up (disability);• Low birth-weight;• Poor memory;• Low intelligence;• Low self esteem;• Poor self image;• Lack of assertiveness;• Poor sense of humour;• Low frustration tolerance• Feeling neglected;• Feeling unloved/unwanted

RELATIONSHIPS• inability to maintain healthy

relationships;• familial psychiatric

problems, • chronic and profound social

stressors, • low socio-economic status, • low academic

achievements by parents,• teenage pregnancy;• domestic violence;• parental illness;• parentified youth;

• poor family functioning or discord,

• parental harshness, • child abuse;• unemployment;• parental alcoholism;• divorce;• parental death;• lack of positive role models;

COMMUNITY• armed conflict, • forced migration, • environmental degradation

and exploitation;• lack of resources, e.g.

libraries, health-care, social, security, housing, electricity, water, road infrastructure, etc,

• violence;• bullying;• mocking by peers;

• crime;• gang activity;• availability of weapons;• availability of drugs;• discrimination;• overcrowding;• noise levels;• HIV/AIDS;• single parent homes;

CULTURALCultural contexts include:•ethnicity, •race and racism,

• discrimination• gender, • socioeconomic status, • sexual orientation, • religion;

•cultural groundedness•practices and procedures in handling risk•lack of cohesion

• Cults;• Harmful rights of passage;

LESSONS LEARNED• You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from

passing over your head, but you can prevent their making a nest in your hair. Chinese proverb

• Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech that you will ever regret. Dr. Laurence J. Peter

• Failure is not falling down, but refusing to get up. Chinese proverb