Occupational resilience: Scoping review of conceptualisations and applications in contexts of adversity

Occupational resilience has emerged as a construct that links the capacity to face adversity with the role of meaningful occupations in the adaptation and recovery of individuals, groups, and communities. However, its definition, theoretical frameworks, and applications remain heterogeneous and partial. This lack of systematisation hinders its integration into occupational therapy and occupational science.

The objective of this study is to map and synthesise the scientific literature on occupational resilience, identifying how it is conceptualised and operationalised.

Using established scoping review frameworks, publications from 2000 to 2025 were searched in databases and through manual searching, including empirical studies and conceptual literature that addressed occupational resilience and its relationship with occupational participation in contexts of adversity.

There was no direct participation of consumers or community representatives in the design, conduct, or interpretation of the findings of this study.

Thirty-seven studies were included that show diverse uses of the term occupational resilience and related concepts, tending to conceptualise it as a trait, an individual capacity, a dynamic process, and an adaptive outcome linked to occupational performance. The findings highlight the role of meaningful occupations in modulating suffering and emotional activation and in rebuilding purpose, agency, roles, routines, and identities after adversity. They also reveal marked differences in definitions, measures, and designs, with a predominance of approaches focussed on individual resilience, mainly in work-related contexts, and limited attention to structural dimensions and occupational justice.

This review offers a structured view of occupational resilience and of the place that meaningful occupations occupy in resilience processes, proposing a process-oriented definition that articulates personal, contextual, and occupational dimensions. The results underscore the need to define integrated theoretical frameworks and occupational therapy interventions explicitly oriented towards the occupational effects of trauma, which validate pain, support the restoration and reinvention of occupational participation, and question the social conditions that make sustained resilience necessary.