Summary
The concept of good mental functioning despite negative influences first arose more than a hundred years ago and has received increasing interest during the last decades. For a long time, lack of unified definition of concept and terms rendered research difficult to compare. Nowadays, consent is reached on a definition of resilience as “an individual’s ability to properly adapt to stress and adversity” and a large number of studies have been performed trying to identify factors that render children resilient. Among these, interpersonal factors like gender, intelligence, aspects of character and temperament as well as genes; factors within the family like a stable and positive relation to an adult; and factors of the broader environment like being integrated into the community have been those most articulately pointed out by research. Although, to date, research on resilience has been extensive, there is still a lack of robust, comparative, empirical studies allowing policy formulation for fostering resilience in children at risk.
Zusammenfassung
Das Konzept von psychischer Stabilität trotz widriger Umstände, welches vor mehr als hundert Jahren erstmals entstand, hat vor allem während der letzten Jahrzehnte zunehmend an Beachtung gewonnen. Das Fehlen einer einheitlichen Definition des Konzeptes an sich sowie der jeweiligen Begrifflichkeiten machte es jedoch über lange Zeit schwierig, Forschungsergebnisse zu vergleichen. Heute wird Resilienz als „die Fähigkeit eines Individuums, Krisen durch Rückgriff auf persönliche Ressourcen zu meistern“ definiert und in vielen Studien wurde und wird versucht, Faktoren, welche Resilienz bei Kindern fördern, zu identifizieren. Hierbei stellten sich persönliche Faktoren wie Geschlecht, Intelligenz, bestimmte Züge von Charakter und Temperament, Aspekte innerhalb der Familie wie etwa eine positive, stabile Beziehung zu einem Erwachsenen sowie Faktoren des Umfeldes wie das Eingebunden sein in eine Gemeinschaft als am stärksten wirksam heraus. Wenngleich es bis heute unzählige Untersuchungen zum Thema Resilienz gibt, fehlt es dennoch noch immer an robusten, vergleichbaren, empirischen Studien als Grundlage für Strategien zur Stärkung der Resilienz bei gefährdeten Kindern.
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Skala, K., Bruckner, T. Beating the odds: an approach to the topic of resilience in children and adolescents. Neuropsychiatr 28, 208–217 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40211-014-0125-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40211-014-0125-7