The Vulnerability and Resiliency of Childhood

Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2019

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2013

The central mission of resilience research is to use scholarship to derive "critical ingredients" for effective intervention. Resilience is the process of harnessing biological, psychosocial, structural, and cultural resources to sustain wellbeing.

European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 2011

Background: The origins of mental disorders arise often in childhood. Early life is a period of unique sensitivity with long lasting effects on mental health. However, the mechanisms for these effects remain unclear. Objective: This thesis describes a variety of studies using a developmental framework to promote greater understanding of the influence of nature (genotypes) and nurture (e.g., environmental risk and protective factors) on outcomes later in childhood. Method: The aim of this thesis is to investigate gene and environmental influences on behavioural, emotional, and cognitive outcomes in different samples from the Netherlands and Singapore, most derived from the general population. We assessed early life influences from a neurobiological, social, and a psychological perspective by using a biopsychosocial framework. Results: Our studies support the hypothesis that all experiences during life, including early experiences in utero, will influence the expression of genes and in the end the mental health of individuals. However, genotypes influencing stress responses are found to be ''plastic,'' which implies that they can be modulated by environmental experiences during life. In line with this, patterns of resilience are found to be contextdependent too. Conclusions: The model of ''epigenetic programming'' suggests the predictive power of the environment in utero and early childhood on mental health later in life. This association is probably determined by a neurodevelopmental pathway with individual differences in neural and endocrine responses to stress.

Within various stages of life, individuals encounter events filled challenges and distress, which can hinder or hamper them in overcoming and moving forward to the next stage. Resilience is psychological approach of positively adjusting to the environment, when struck with adversity. Childhood, youth, adolescence and young adult stages are each delicate stages of life, in which potentially traumatic events might occur. Children and youth in particular have a greater likelihood of encountering problems throughout their developmental process due to lack of proper familial support and societal intervention. Adverse events during family life cycle can translate into issues in family relationships, mental health and overall family functioning. These contexts may be escalated due to other challenges such as differences in structure and composition of families, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. The current review examines the psychological approach (resilience), its manifestation and influence during different developmental stages of life.

Encyclopedia on Early Childhood …, 2005

Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences, 2006

Abstract: There are many advantages of using resilience as a framework to guide the screening, assessment, and promotion of social–emotional health in children. This article reviews which individual attributes are most important for the resilience of elementary school-age children, as primarily determined by the positive attribute's ability to discriminate between typically developing children and those with disciplinary, mental health, and/or special education referrals or services. This research lends itself to a practical framework to scientifically measure and utilize individual social–emotional strengths for the purposes of fostering resilience in all children.

First published in print format isbn-13 978-0-521-80701-2 hardback isbn-13 978-0-521-00161-8 paperback isbn-13 978-0-511-07228-4 eBook (EBL)

This study examines person attributes and environmental characteristics to assess the relationship between resilience and adolescents' mental health. The adolescents are 13-18 years old and at developmental stages when they are most likely to become more independent from their parents and start to build up and manage their emotional independence and decisions. Although it is understood that resilience encompasses the ability to push through, overcome, and ultimately 'bounce back' from experienced adversities, the measurement and approaches to resilience still differ across disciplines. The current study expands on existing research on resilience. The notable difference in depressive symptoms is the result of resilience and additional supportive familial relationships. The interrelationships of external and personal characteristics contribute to differences in resilience and changes over the early life course from adolescence to young adulthood.

Psicologia Escolar e Educacional (Impresso), 1998

Considers the meaning of the term childhood resilience and the importance ofits place in the fields of developmental psychopathology and wellness enhancement. Reviews several major longitudinal research projects on childhood resilience that have contributed significantly to the field's emergence and presents more detailed information on the Rochester Child Resilience Project (RCRP). A final section summarizes accomplishments in resilience research to date, and identifies needed foci for future work in this area.

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2006

Although resilience is usually thought to reside in individuals, developmental research is increasingly demonstrating that characteristics of the social context may be better predictors of resilience. When the relative contribution of early resilience and environmental challenges to later child mental health and academic achievement were compared in a longitudinal study from birth to adolescence, indicators of child resilience, such as the behavioral and emotional self-regulation characteristic of good mental health, and the cognitive self-regulation characteristic of high intelligence contributed to later competence. However, the effects of such individual resilience did not overcome the effects of high environmental challenge, such as poor parenting, antisocial peers, low-resource communities, and economic hardship. The effects of single environmental challenges become very large when accumulated into multiple risk scores even affecting the development of offspring in the next generation.