Related Experiment Videos
Elements of dynamics v: resiliency and the narrative.
1West Los Angeles VA Mental Illness Research Education and Clinical Center (MIRECC), Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA. ebromley@ucla.edu
The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry
|September 24, 2005
Summary
Understanding mental health and resilience is growing. Resilient individuals often show sociability, self-efficacy, and meaning, but population studies may lack generalizability. Person-centered methods offer valuable context for studying resilience.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Mental Health Research
- Sociology
Background:
- Growing interest in mental health and resilience among clinicians and researchers.
- Population-based studies use wellness constructs, identifying common resilient attributes like sociability, self-efficacy, and meaning.
- Challenges exist in generalizability and capturing the full spectrum of adaptive coping in resilience research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the complexities and challenges in the systematic study of resilience.
- To highlight the limitations of current population-based approaches to resilience research.
- To advocate for and illustrate the utility of person-centered methods in understanding resilience.
Main Methods:
- Review of existing literature on mental health and resilience constructs.
- Analysis of attributes common in resilient individuals within population studies.
- Examination of person-centered research methods, including psychoanalytic case studies and ethnographies.
- Illustration through narrative-based studies of resilience.
Main Results:
- Sociability, self-efficacy, and a sense of meaning are identified as key attributes of resilient individuals.
- Population-based studies, while identifying common traits, may have limited generalizability.
- Person-centered methods provide valuable context and detail, complementing quantitative approaches.
- Narrative-based studies demonstrate the richness of individual resilience experiences.
Conclusions:
- The systematic study of resilience faces challenges in generalizability and capturing adaptive coping diversity.
- A combination of population-based and person-centered research methods is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of resilience.
- Person-centered approaches, like case studies and ethnographies, enrich resilience research with contextual depth.