Resilience: Promoting Well-Being Through Recovery, Sustainability, and Growth

Abstract

This article discusses the construct of resilience and suggests potential benefits of taking a resilience-based approach in social science research. Inspired by the early work of Werner on resilient children, the authors provide conceptual guidelines and suggest methods of inquiry into how people and communities stay healthy, even thrive in stressful contexts. They examine the recruitment of positive emotion, a fundamental resilience resource and as an example, offer their own intervention to promote resilience in individuals with chronic pain by enhancing resilience capacities through the cultivation of emotional complexity. Their discussion of community well-being reveals a burgeoning field of study that promises to contribute to our understanding of individual and community resilience and the importance of social connection.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work is supported in part by a grant from the National Institute on Aging R01 AG 026006, Alex Zautra (PI). In addition, the authors wish to acknowledge St. Luke's Charitable Trust and the Arizona State University Office of the Vice President for Research for their support.