Resilience

Mancini and Bonanno (2006) described resiliency as an ability to maintain "relatively stable, healthy levels of psychological and physical functioning" in spite of experiencing some type of very dramatic or disturbing event such as loss of loved one or some other emotionally taxing tragedy (p. 972). The authors also make the important point that resiliency is quite different from recovery in that individuals who are considered to be resilient demonstrate more stable levels of functioning before and after such experiences and less overt distress during such experiences. According to the article there are a number of characteristics that appear to be associated with resiliency and that people who undergo more extreme levels of distress in response to a traumatic event appear to be the exception rather than the norm. An additional factor that I believe to be important is the idea that resilience does not mean being uncaring or...
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