Resilience in the face of sexual minority stress: “Choices” between authenticity and self-determination

This qualitative study explored the experience of sexual minority stressors and corresponding resilience. Using a grounded theory approach, the core category identified in the analysis was minority stress results from systemic factors that cause lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people to face competition between their desires for authenticity and self-determination. These findings shed light upon the insidious nature of minority stress, especially within U.S. contexts that lack protective legislation, and the adaptive strategies people use to mitigate their effects. By positioning resilience as a choice between authenticity and self-determination, resilience is understood to lessen but not resolve the deleterious impact of sexual minority stress.     

Toward a Social Theory of Resilience: Social Systems,Cultural Systems,and Collective Action in Transitioning Forest‐Based Communities

Impacts from post‐Fordist and poststaples economic transition in the Canadian natural resource sector have resulted in dramatic challenges to the livelihoods of many rural residents and the viability of many rural communities. This study seeks to understand community response to economic transition through a lens of social ecological resilience. This article puts forward Archer's theory of cultural morphogenesis as an analogous model of social ecological change that focuses attention on cultural systems, cultural elaboration, and collective action within an adaptive cycle of resilience. With case material from focused ethnographies of two forest‐dependent communities, we identify distinctive interactions between culture and agency over time that condition community response to change, and we make an analytical distinction between the social system and cultural system. These insights point to catalysts for collective action and adaptation within a resilient cultural realm that extend beyond institutional factors such as economic dependency or political opportunity. By integrating culture, we also deepen the social theory contribution to social‐ecological resilience.     

The Social Environmental Elements of Resilience Among Vulnerable African American/Black Men Who Have Sex With Men

Resilience theory has been suggested as a strong framework for research on HIV prevention among men who have sex with men (MSM). Among this population, literature indicates that African American/Black MSM are particularly vulnerable to health and social disparities associated with HIV transmission risk. Conceptualizing resilience as a part of one’s social environment, this qualitative study investigates the specific elements of resilience, and the associated contexts and relationships, among a sample of 21 substance-using African American/Black MSM. Data indicate that (1) elements contributing to resilience are multiple and co-occurring, including inner strengths, social relationships, diversity of experience, religion/spirituality, altruism, and creativity; (2) as an element of resilience, social support was experienced differently among men who did and did not have supportive relationships with other gay and bisexual men, which has implications for social service provision and intervention approaches; and (3) diversity of experiences and relationships is an important influencing factor on expressions of resilience. Social services or interventions that facilitate the development of these elements of resilience will likely be especially beneficial for vulnerable African American/Black MSM.     

Resilience as Reflexivity: A New Understanding for Work with Looked-After Children

This article argues that the current model of resilience in the social work literature, through its predominant focus on outcomes and behaviours rather than the underlying processes of development involved, risks superficiality and appears to lack an underpinning psychological theory of the way in which resilience develops. In response, I propose a psychodynamic understanding of this process, which sees resilience as rooted in the capacity for reflexivity (defined here as an awareness of one's own mental state and the mental states of others), and which describes how this capacity develops. This holds that a strong-enough ego, with the capacity for resilience-as-reflexivity, is the necessary precursor of the child's ability to make use of positive experiences. This psychodynamic understanding of resilience development aims to give social workers a greater appreciation of how the mental health of children in the care system may have been affected by their experiences, and how they can be helped to develop the psychological foundations of resilience and therefore better mental health. I suggest that workers can use this understanding to assess the stage of resilience-development a child has reached, and to inform therapeutic work aimed at strengthening their resilience.     

Career resilience of female professionals in the male-dominated IT industry in Sweden: Toward a process perspective

Sweden is known to be one of the most gender-equal societies in the world. Thus, it remains as an enigma why a large discrepancy continues to exist regarding the gender balance in career choice and progression in many professions. Drawing on Hirdman's (1988) theory of gendered systems, in this paper, we explore the role of career resilience in the career progression of women who choose to work in the male-dominated IT sector. We draw attention to how the day-to-day process of practicing career resilience in a gendered workplace tends to evolve as women progress in their careers. Based on an interview study with 50 female IT professionals as well as a discourse analysis of 502 newspaper articles on women in this sector, we develop a process model of career resilience in gendered professions, outlining different coping strategies that allow women to develop and enhance such resilience over time. We conclude the paper by providing some practical recommendations.     

From Problems to Personal Resilience

SUMMARY

This paper reviews data on select areas relevant to the status, functioning, and general well-being of African American Youth. Practitioners in both policy and clinical intervention must assert a greater role in helping these adolescents grow, develop, and become prepared to take their rightful place in American Society. Attention is afforded the African American Family, particularly Black youth and the threats, both historical and contemporary, which confront their ability to survive, cope, and sustain a resilient presence. Conflict theory is used to understand how this population interfaces with oppression, and a resilience framework, coupled with group as a method are presented as strategies for working with Black adolescents. The authors proffer that a justice-based model is useful in supporting this resilience framework within a group approach.     

Integrating Family Resilience and Family Stress Theory

The construct, family resilience, has been defined and applied very differently by those who are primarily clinical practitioners and those who are primarily researchers in the family field. In thisarticle, the family resilience perspective is integrated with conceptual definitions from family stress theory using the Family Adjustment and Adaptation Response (FAAR) Model in an effort to clarify distinctions between family resiliency as capacity and family resilience as a process. The family resilience process is discussed in terms of (a) the meaning of significant risk exposure (vs. the normal challenges of family life) and (b) the importance of making conceptual and operational distinctions between family system outcomes and family protective processes. Recommendations for future family resilience research are discussed.     

Enhancing Wellbeing in Social Work Students: Building Resilience in the Next Generation

The need for social workers to be resilient is widely emphasised. Although enhancing resilience in social work trainees presents a challenge to educators, they are nonetheless responsible for developing professionals who are able to cope with the emotional demands of the job. This paper argues that building resilience in the future workforce should be a key element of social work education. However, as little is known about the competencies and support structures that underpin resilience or the extent to which resilience protects the wellbeing of trainees, an evidence-based approach is required to inform curriculum development.

Recent research conducted by the authors of this paper has highlighted the protective nature of resilience in social work trainees. Emotional intelligence and associated competencies, such as reflective ability, aspects of empathy and social confidence, were found to be key predictors of this important quality. The important role played by social support from various sources was also emphasised. The present paper summarises this research, and presents interventions based on the findings that have the potential to promote resilience and wellbeing in social work trainees. Also considered are ways in which the curriculum might be further enhanced to provide trainees with an internal ‘tool-box’ of strategies that will help them manage their wellbeing more effectively in their future career.     

Resilience,mental health and Assertive Community Treatment

Clinicians try to promote resilience by building an effective therapeutic relationship with their clients. Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) is an established approach for providing services to individuals with severe mental illness who have not fared well in the regular mental health system. This work underscores the importance of a resilient therapeutic relationship in preventing relapse and assuring adherence to therapeutic outcomes. Persistent psychiatric illness takes a toll on the resilience of the client, while the relationship work takes a toll on the resilience of the clinician. This article explores the concept of relational resilience between clinician and client as a dynamic process of shared success and failure, progress and regression through cycles of crisis, stabilization, relapse, and partial recovery. This is a qualitative study exploring how ACT clinicians promote and sustain resilience and is based on interviews with social workers, nurses, occupational and recreational therapists, coordinators, and psychiatrists.     

May the force be with you: Looking for resources that build team resilience

The aim of this study is to analyze team resilience as a collective psychosocial construct in the framework of the conservation of resources theory. Specifically, the authors hypothesize that (a) team-level resources and (b) organizational-level healthy practices would be positively related to team resilience. Multilevel regression modeling was conducted, using data from 1,167 employees nested in 194 work teams (team level) from 38 organizations (organizational level). Results confirmed the hypotheses having team-level resources and organizational-level healthy practices significant relationships with team resilience. This study provides evidence that team and organizational resources have a strong relationship with team resilience. Practitioners and managers must take these results into account for planning how to manage their resources within the organization. This article found what resources are required (at the team and the organizational level) to help work-team resilience.     

Adversity,resilience and young people: the protective value of positive school and spare time experiences

This paper argues for the value of resilience as a key concept in work with young people in need and considers some of the implications of a resilience led approach for policy and practice. Resilience refers to a capacity to do well despite adverse experience. Social and developmental factors influencing a child or young person's degree of resilience are discussed, with particular reference to the resilience enhancing potential of school experiences and spare time activities. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Global Economic Integration and Local Community Resilience: Road Paving and Rural Demographic Change in the Southwestern Amazon

Recent years have witnessed an expansion in international investment in large‐scale infrastructure projects with the goal of achieving global economic integration. We focus on one such project, the Inter‐Oceanic Highway in the “MAP” region, a trinational frontier where Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru meet in the southwestern Amazon. We adopt a resilience approach as an integrative framework to understand various types of road‐paving impacts. We focus on migration activity as an indicator of retention of collective memory, a concept associated with resilience. We pursue a comparative analysis of the three sides of the MAP frontier as well as subregions within each side. Since road paving may be mediated by other factors, we distinguish among the effects of multiple explanatory factors. Data come from a multinational survey of rural communities. The findings show considerable net migration and turnover, both indicative of eroding collective memory and a lack of demographic resilience to externally induced change in the MAP frontier. The findings indicate variation across the frontier, which road paving helps explain, along with some of the mediating factors. These findings contribute to the literature on the impacts of new infrastructure and integration as well as the study of social‐ecological resilience.     

Fostering secure attachment in low- and middle-income countries: Suggestions for evidence-based interventions

Children struggling with the effects of trauma in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) face a substantial mental health resource gap that limits their opportunities for positive psychosocial development. Multidisciplinary interventions working to close this gap may benefit from incorporating an empirically supported treatment (EST) into their approach that targets a universal mechanism implicated in resilience, like attachment. ESTs should be selected based on their level of empirical support and cultural adaptability, and then modified on the basis of qualitative evaluations conducted with the local population and stakeholders. This paper will provide an overview of attachment as a mechanism of resilience, a critical analysis of existing attachment-based ESTs, and recommendations for overcoming EST implementation barriers in LMIC.     

Ethical Practice and Narratives of Resistance to Violence: Becoming Resilient Part 2

This paper is the second part of a previous publication in this journal and is based on a plenary address at the 30th Australian Family Therapy Conference in 2009. It develops the idea of ethical practice in therapy for men and boys with a history of significant violence and abuse. This fosters a connection with resilience that resists or refuses to participate in historical narratives that support violence and its effects. In the paper, I provide several therapeutic examples of working with narratives of violence and present a theory of resilience and ethical practice drawing on the ideas of Deleuze. This helps to understand resilience as a process of ethical agency, creative renewal, and the production of expansive difference.     

Whose responsibility? Resilience in families of children with developmental disabilities

Families with children with disabilities are at higher risk of stress, financial disadvantage and breakdown. In recent decades, research and policy have shifted focus from these problems to a strengths-based approach, using concepts such as family resilience. By definition, resilience is the ability to cope in adverse circumstances, suggesting a reliance on the individual. If this is the case, then to what extent does ‘family resilience’ place another burden of responsibility onto families? Whose responsibility is family resilience? This paper begins to answer this question using interviews with parents of children with developmental disabilities based in New South Wales, Australia.     

Paving Pathways Through the Pain: A Grounded Theory of Resilience Among Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,Trans, and Queer Youth

This grounded theory study utilized interviews with 16 service providers and 19 lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) youth to develop a substantive theory of resilience processes among LGBTQ youth. The core category, paving pathways through the pain, suggests that LGBTQ youth build on emotional pain inflicted by external adversities to carve out pathways to resilience. Youth employed the following resilience processes: (1) navigating safety across contexts, (2) asserting personal agency, (3) seeking and cultivating meaningful relationships, (4) un‐silencing marginalized identities, and (5) engaging in collective healing and action. Youth focused on particularly painful adversities and engaged intentionally in one or more of the resilience processes related to the origins of their pain.     

Career Adaptability,Resilience, and Life Satisfaction Among Italian and Belgian Middle School Students

Youth need help with planning their future, developing positive life trajectories, and coping with socioeconomic conditions. Using a life design approach, we analyzed the relationship between career adaptability, resilience, and life satisfaction among Belgian (N = 158) and Italian (N = 158) middle school students. We hypothesized that career adaptability, directly and indirectly via resilience, would predict life satisfaction. Furthermore, we predicted that the conceptual model would be comparable between countries. Each participant completed self-report measures to assess career adaptability, resilience, and life satisfaction. The results obtained using a two-step approach to structural equation modeling suggest that career adaptability is directly and indirectly, through resilience, related to students' life satisfaction in both Italian and Belgian students. These results have important implications for supporting middle school students in their life design process.     

Building aid workers’ resilience: why a gendered approach is needed

The concept of resilience is increasingly earning attention in development and humanitarian literature. Agencies and organisations are interested to learn about resilient communities, and keen to support the goal of ‘building resilience’ in developing countries. However, there is comparatively little interest in the resilience of aid workers themselves. This article will discuss the need to support aid workers to build resilience, for their own well-being and also for the effectiveness and sustainability of the essential humanitarian and development work they do. It will advocate for the need of embracing a gender-focused approach in the study of aid workers’ resilience, and more generally, in the study and promotion of aid workers’ well-being. The article draws on a qualitative study which found international women aid workers face specific stressors within the organisations they work for, in working relationships with national staff, and in their personal life. Humanitarian and development organisations need to adopt a gender-focused approach to resilience in the provision of psychosocial support for staff working in development, and emergency relief/humanitarian aid.