Ok, I think I wrote this, as a forum post for my psych 101 class last year. And yes I just took psych 101, wanted to see what all the fuss was about. No, I didn't like it, got little value out of it and will not return to take psych 102 lol
When I say "I think I wrote this", I mean it. I have a really poor memory, especially for things I write. (the poor memory could explain part of my issues with psych 101). Anyway, if I have inadvertently stolen this from someone I really do apologize.
Inherited Resilience?
When we think of resilience we most often think of it as something that is learned, mostly through healthy parenting and early life experiences that provide support for challenges. In this article James Neill defines psychological resilience as an “individual's capacity to withstand stressors and not manifest psychology dysfunction, such as mental illness or persistent negative mood.”
Twin studies estimate the heritability of major depressive disorder at 0.36 to 0.70. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=OMIM Depression, negative mood, schizophrenia, psychosis, autism and even binge drinking have been recently linked to the neurotransmitter serotonin. http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v3/n4/pdf/4000412a.pdf
5-HTT is a serotonin transporter that plays an important if not critical role in regulating the reuptake of serotonin.
It seems, based on what I can understand about the research, that some people about 57% inherit 5-HTT with a long alleles and 43% with a short alleles. Those with 2 long alleles seem to have an edge when it comes to resilience and those with one or two short alleles seem to be more prone to depression after a triggering event.
This web page titled “5-HTT: The Gene for Susceptibility to Depression?” was produced as an assignment for an undergraduate course at Davidson College. It provided me with the most understandable version of the research and clarified the “short/short” vs. “long/long” allele hypothesis.
R. J. O’Hara for the Collegiate Way (link here) discusses the interrelatedness of genes and environment in children who have been abused. He makes an excellent point in that despite being dealt the genetic equivalent of a poor hand of cards providing support for abused children can mediate the effects of a short/short 5-HTT gene.
What appeals to me about this line of research is the positive side of the double edge sword debate. Some have said that being able to predict a propensity for such things as depression or resilience can have negative effects such as self fulfilling (negative) destiny or the potential that people would be unable to access job opportunities or insurance.
The other side of this is being able to inform people of why they need to take care of themselves. One of the questions most often asked by clients in counseling is “why”. Why is this happening to me? Why do I feel this way?
I think for many people it is comforting to know that it is just the way they are built. In the medical community physicians recognize and incorporate an inherited possibility of cancer, heart disease, etc and help patients manage their lifestyles to mediate the inherited risk. Psychological health is as, if not more, important.
Showing posts with label resilience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resilience. Show all posts
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Day Two WCYFA - Resilience
Day two began with a Plenary about Resiliency with Kimberly Schonert/Reichl
My first question.. Bearing in mind the room was filled with Youth Workers. How many Youth Workers does it take to define Resilience? Punch line - 1 and 25 people to support them.
Ok, if you have a better punch line that (in some weird way) defines the essence of resilience, please send it to me.
And if you are offended by that, please don’t be, it may just be that it missed a lot in the translation from my head to the typed word.
Ok, we began the plenary with an exercise on gratitude. More accurately, our first task was to focus on something we were grateful for this week. The idea behind the exercise was to shift our focus from a risk model to strengths model. It also allowed us to be reminded that gratitude was one way to build resilience.
The other way to build resilience is through relationship. The act of “seeing” children/people differently, seeing their strengths, even when they don’t, builds resilience, said the presenter.
Kimberly went on to say that their were three guiding principles in building resilience: Attending to the development of the whole child, attention to context, and relationships as central.
She really was preaching to the choir. We all know this; at least everyone in the room knew this. And that’s not a bad thing. Knowledge doesn’t have to be new to be worthwhile.
Kimberly went on to talk a bit about risk, noting that 1 in 6 children live in poverty in Canada and sadly (shamefully) 1 in 4 lives in poverty in BC. She also noted that 1 in 5 youth experience mental health problems.
These are things that put children at higher risk. I personally don’t think it’s a direct correlation. These are factors that increase the likelihood of other factors that cause direct harm. Low economic status in and of itself does not cause problems for children, the reasons for poverty (i.e. parents who are not able to care for themselves or their children due to substance abuse and/or mental health issues) and the reduced opportunities that come from living in poverty however do increase risk.
Resilience doesn’t reside in the child. It occurs in context. Although some of the ingredients of resilience are heritable AND heritable traits are impacted by environment. (See next post for more about heritably of resilience.)
The focus of course needs to be on the context, the environmental factors that increase resilience, because this we can impact. Fifty odd years of research have proven time and again that things like early attachment, school experiences, family dynamics, community and neighborhoods are the differences that make the difference in building and destroying resilience.
We also know from research on the impact of early trauma that those who have experienced trauma, even at an early age, manage to not just survive but (some) to thrive IF they have one person in their life that genuinely cares about them. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Werner and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_resilience
The question raised was - How can agencies and programs create opportunities for mentorship and help youth learn resiliency and relationship skills?
As the discussion evolved a participant raised a good point by quoted Bruce Perry saying, “Children are not born resilience, they are born malleable”.
The gist of the answers we came up with involved the most basic principles of positive psychology: maintain a view of the person’s potential regardless of their current behaviour, mentor, model and teach, be the change you want to see. You know, all the good stuff.
Related links: http://traumatreatment.blogspot.com/
http://www.childtraumaacademy.com/ offers free online courses about childhood trauma developed by Bruce Perry.
My first question.. Bearing in mind the room was filled with Youth Workers. How many Youth Workers does it take to define Resilience? Punch line - 1 and 25 people to support them.
Ok, if you have a better punch line that (in some weird way) defines the essence of resilience, please send it to me.
And if you are offended by that, please don’t be, it may just be that it missed a lot in the translation from my head to the typed word.
Ok, we began the plenary with an exercise on gratitude. More accurately, our first task was to focus on something we were grateful for this week. The idea behind the exercise was to shift our focus from a risk model to strengths model. It also allowed us to be reminded that gratitude was one way to build resilience.
The other way to build resilience is through relationship. The act of “seeing” children/people differently, seeing their strengths, even when they don’t, builds resilience, said the presenter.
Kimberly went on to say that their were three guiding principles in building resilience: Attending to the development of the whole child, attention to context, and relationships as central.
She really was preaching to the choir. We all know this; at least everyone in the room knew this. And that’s not a bad thing. Knowledge doesn’t have to be new to be worthwhile.
Kimberly went on to talk a bit about risk, noting that 1 in 6 children live in poverty in Canada and sadly (shamefully) 1 in 4 lives in poverty in BC. She also noted that 1 in 5 youth experience mental health problems.
These are things that put children at higher risk. I personally don’t think it’s a direct correlation. These are factors that increase the likelihood of other factors that cause direct harm. Low economic status in and of itself does not cause problems for children, the reasons for poverty (i.e. parents who are not able to care for themselves or their children due to substance abuse and/or mental health issues) and the reduced opportunities that come from living in poverty however do increase risk.
Resilience doesn’t reside in the child. It occurs in context. Although some of the ingredients of resilience are heritable AND heritable traits are impacted by environment. (See next post for more about heritably of resilience.)
The focus of course needs to be on the context, the environmental factors that increase resilience, because this we can impact. Fifty odd years of research have proven time and again that things like early attachment, school experiences, family dynamics, community and neighborhoods are the differences that make the difference in building and destroying resilience.
We also know from research on the impact of early trauma that those who have experienced trauma, even at an early age, manage to not just survive but (some) to thrive IF they have one person in their life that genuinely cares about them. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Werner and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_resilience
The question raised was - How can agencies and programs create opportunities for mentorship and help youth learn resiliency and relationship skills?
As the discussion evolved a participant raised a good point by quoted Bruce Perry saying, “Children are not born resilience, they are born malleable”.
The gist of the answers we came up with involved the most basic principles of positive psychology: maintain a view of the person’s potential regardless of their current behaviour, mentor, model and teach, be the change you want to see. You know, all the good stuff.
Related links: http://traumatreatment.blogspot.com/
http://www.childtraumaacademy.com/ offers free online courses about childhood trauma developed by Bruce Perry.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)