Resilience to violence Lecture notes 2023
Lecture 1: A short history of resilience science
Exam: 2th November 13-15u: 40 MC (6 per lecture) + 2 open questions: Historical and theoretical development,
Empirical models and approaches, The four waves of resilience research, Theoretical frameworks and theories,
Individual social cultural and geo-political factors and/or processes, Severity of exposure context and developmental
timing
Short history of resilience science
Covid, earthquake disasters, war, etc. have a substantial affect on individuals experiencing considerable psychological
distress, ranged from approximately one-tenth to nearly half of the respondents. Several groups with vulnerabilities,
such as disaster workers, children, internally displaced people, patients with psychiatric disorders, and the bereaved.
Ecological systems theory
Burger et al., 2021
Child maltreatment: abusive or neglectful experience that occur to children and adolescents under the age of 18
‘The consequences of failing to address adolescent mental health conditions extend to adulthood, impairing both
physical and mental health and limiting opportunities to lead fulfilling lives as adults.’ (WHO)
,How can we boost resilience to violence and trauma in children and young people?
Resilience: the noun resilience, meaning ‘the act of rebounding’, was first used in the 1620s and was derived from
‘resiliens’, the present participle of Latin ‘resilire’, to recoil or rebound. By 1824, the term had developed to
encompass the meaning of ‘elasticity’
The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness
The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape, elasticity
More than 50 years of resilience research
Norman Garmenzy
Emily Werner
Michael Rutter
o Describing the concept of resilience
o Future vision: can we impact/influence/promote resilience among adolescents/youngsters that are in
need for resilience
Adolescents at risk: war, low social-economic status, intergenerational transmission of
physiology when your parents have physiology, you are at bigger risk, minority groups,
The children of Kauai
200 children classified as high risk
2/3 significant problems at age 10 or 18
1/3 showed resilience
Later on in life some showed resilience = late bloomers
Resilience is not something that is stable, it can change
Resilience research: why do some children who experience adversity, violence and trauma develop poorly, whilst
others do not?
1. Who stays well and recovers well?
2. How?
3. How can we promote and protect health and positive development?
The four waves
FIRST WAVE 1970s: Doing well in the context of risk
Descriptive: What questions
o What is resilience? How do we measure it? What makes a difference?
Focus on individual factors & situational differences
Lacked understanding of (underlying) processes
Person focused model of resilience
o Single case studies (Harry Potter
o Aggregate studies (Kuai)
o Recent: individual differences
Classic model: the children of Kauai study
SECOND WAVE 1990s: (underlying) processes
How questions
, o How do protective influences work?
o How is positive development promoted?
Resilience as a process, not a single event
Attention to developmental and ecological systems
Unable to inform (effective resilience) interventions
Two research methods:
Person-focused: Child characteristics (Second wave)
Variable-focused: Family characteristics (Third wave)
Statistically test patterns among variables in groups of individuals
CA= Childhood Adversity
o Main effects o Mediation
model o Moderation
o Risk activated Moderation (airbag) o Classic Moderation
Positive memory specificity is associated with reduced vulnerability to depression
Systems influencing children:
, Microsystem: is the smallest and most immediate environment in
which children live
Mesosystem: encompasses the interaction of the different
microsystems which children find themselves in
Mesosystem: linkages between home and school, between peer
group and family, and between family and community.
Exosystem: the linkages that may exist between two or more
settings, one of which may not contain the developing children but
affect them indirectly nonetheless.
Chronosystem: time (period)
Developmental systems theory (Masten, 2019)
Developmental systems theory: a person’s development is affected by the complex interactions of several
systems external to the individual, embedded in multiple ecological layers
Competence or achievements on depend on age and time dependent stages
THIRD WAVE 2007: Interventions
Testing theories through interventions, can resilience be promoted?
Lacked integration of neurobiological and social systems.
(Dynamic systems, multi-level Analyses, interventions for resilience)
o What to do with people who don’t show resilience ?
o Neuroendocrine substances about stress resilience are gradually explored
o Molecular adaptations underlying susceptibility and resistance to social defeat in brain reward regions
o Intervening to foster resilience & neuro-bio-psychosocial perspective
The Bucharest Early Intervention Study (BEIP):
o Abortion and contraception illegal
o Menstrual police: women fewer than 5 kids; monthly examinations by state gynecologists to make
sure they weren’t using birth control
o Celibacy tax: heavy tax if less than 5 kids
o Large spike in the number of Romanian infants abandoned to deplorable conditions in the country’s
orphanages. 1989: 170.000 kids in institutions
o Examine the effects of institutionalization on brain and behavioral development of young children
o Effects could be remediated by foster care
o Improved welfare of children in Romania by establishing foster care as alternative to
institutionalization
FOURTH WAVE 2017: Dynamic systems
Integrating genetics, neuroscience, sociology; dynamic interactive systems
Hybrid models
Growth models
Network model comparisons
Well-being and cognition are coupled during development
Unravelling the complex nature of resilience factors and their changes between early and later adolescence
The resilient emotional brain: a scoping review of medial prefrontal cortex and limbic structure and function
in resilient adults with a history of childhood maltreatment
o Stronger connectivity between the central executive network and the limbic regions
o Improved ability to regulate emotions through medial prefrontal cortex-limbic downregulation
o White matter integrity of pathways involved in self-referential processing
Friendships support interacts with CA to predict acute stress responses in young people (ages 16-26) with
threat experiences (N=61)
