Biopsychosocial approach to understanding resilience: Stress habituation and where to intervene

Abstract

Background: Resilience in the face of adversity is a human experience that leads to better health, both mentally and physically. We briefly review its historical origins rooted in ecological biology and its adoption into health care. Resilience is the common response to adversity or potential traumatic events. Individual differences in emotion regulation and coping skills as well as social capital and one's physical environment influence a person's ability to achieve resilience. Proposed Mechanism: One potential biopsychosocial measure of resilience includes stress habituation to repeated stress as demonstrated in the laboratory, possibly providing a tool to observe mastery of resilience training in the clinic. Evidencebased interventions at the individual and small group level (eg, family, classroom) have successfully shown development of resilient behaviours and improved mental and physical health outcomes. However, the role of social context and public policy clearly influence an individual's ability to be resilient.Conclusions: Despite the current limited evidence of the effectiveness of resilience building interventions, clinicians, researchers, and other health care professions have an obligation to become advocates for laws and policies that support the most vulnerable, and least resilient, in our society to attain resilience for their health. This salutary effect will enable them to become socially as well as economically productive members of the community at large. It is not possible to remove stress or adversity from life, but we can influence the development of regulatory flexibility and decrease the sociocultural factors linked to the nonresilient experience, thus mitigating adversity's long-term effects on health.

Forging, protecting, and repairing community resilience informed by the 2019–2020 Australian bushfires

“…Through development of individual and collective knowledge, growth of resilience at individual and community‐wide levels can ensue. This perspective incorporates an understanding of resilience beyond ‘bouncing back to the original state’ to embrace resilience as a continuous and progressive development in which individuals and their communities incorporate experiences and associated learnings to create a new level of stability (Bennett, Rohleder, & Sturmberg, ).…”

Effects of Workplace-Related Factors on the Prevalence of Fibromyalgia among Israeli Kindergarten Teachers

“…While resilience has been given different definitions over history and in varying scientific disciplines, internal personal characteristics such as balance, perseverance, self-reliance, and, possibly most importantly, attribution of meaning and purpose to life are among the most important attributes of this concept [ 18 , 19 ]. Resilience is associated with important neurophysiological aspects, such as the capacity to perform inhibition of the amygdala by the median prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which can protect against the development of PTSD and chronic pain [ 20 , 21 ]. How might this relate to the population of kindergarten teachers?…”

Stress und Covid-19: Ein Narrativer Review über neuroendokrin-immune Mechanismen, die eine Abwehr von SARS-CoV-2 verbessern könnten

“…Üblicherweise wird mit Stress-reduzierender Therapie Stressbewältigungstraining oder Stress-abbauende Behandlung assoziiert [100][101][102][103][104]. Gerade die Forschung der letzten 10-20 Jahre zeigt jedoch auch, dass ein gezieltes Trainieren der Stressreaktivität einen positiven Einfluss auf eine adaptive neuroendokrin-immune Stressantwort haben kann [99,[105][106][107]. In diesen Jahren sind auch zahlreiche immunologische Pharmakotherapien entwickelt wor-den, aus deren Effekten man für die Auswahl möglicher Stress-Interventionen lernen kann.…”