Enhancing Resilience and Family Health in the Asian Context

Abstract

Social workers can facilitate the formation of a new form of resilience to cope with the ever-changing social context of individuals and families. The resilience can be established through a new form of “Body-Mind-Spirit Transformation Therapy”. Through working with chronic patients, dying patients, bereaved families, infertile couples, divorced women and disadvantaged children, the authors have developed a new intervention approach of Transformation Therapy which emphasised the building strength and resilience of individuals. This approach incorporates the body, the mind, the spirit as well as the social participation to help transform clients in “turning curses into blessings” and “transformation through pain”. This growth-oriented approach help build a healthy body, healthy mind and a healthy sense of meaning of life in society. Specific examples of individuals and groups are used to illustrate how individuals and families changed into being more resilient through transformation therapy.