This chapter explains the role of resilience in dealing stress effectively and to ensure good mental health. In the phase of COVID-19, people passed through different types of stresses ranging from social to economic, which affected the mental health of individuals. Resilience is a skill, pretty much like an asset provided to all individuals by nature, but its effective usage tends to prevent stress, anxiety, and depression. Resilience is a dynamic system of interaction with varying events of life. Facing a severe trauma and rising up from the downfall with greater strength than earlier represents adaptation of the individual. It is important to understand that resilience develops from day-to-day events and it can be learned at any age. Understanding of resilience as a process is more practical because it suggests that odds in life can tilt into positives. Children, youth, or even adults suffering from mental health issues can be treated and directed towards normal life as before. In order to do so, one must focus on the scientific perspective of resilience as a process.
“It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself, that determines how your life’s story will develop.”
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
TopIntroduction
Life has always remained a challenging task for humans. The maze of life contains different stresses and challenges inevitably has to face nearly all of us in different phases of life. After the World War II interest in Psychology arose and researches on psychological phenomena started on large scale. Studies on Psychological resource systems, stress, and resilience arise from that mega unfortune event of the world (Garmezy, 1987; Masten, 2014). At present the COVID-19 Pandemic has proven the largest adverse event of the century, affected lives of the hundreds and thousands of people worldwide. This troubled time affected all age groups whether children or adults, and interest in resilience again caught attention to guide and help the individuals to pass through this trauma smoothly. The negative effects on physio-psychological health, least interaction with others, social isolation during lock down conditions and uncertainty about future has disturbed the psychological health of the individuals.
Each age group has their own range of problems according to available resources and their goals in life. The problems range from economical such as lack of resources, financial constraints, attainment of goals, to personal factors like health issues, interpersonal conflicts, peer pressure, peer conflict and social-vocational conditions like adjustment in life, job and family issues etc. Each individual deal with these issues or problems in his or her unique way with the help of the innate psychological resources provided. Recently the Pandemic has disturbed masses of the world adversely, the uncertain situation during Pandemic raised health related issues for population generally. All age groups well-being affected negatively. The unclear situation and overlapping of the information about the symptom and effects of Corona virus related disease, decreased economic conditions and resources, social isolation and distancing all disturbed the mental health of the individuals worldwide (Benjamin et al., 2021, Yasmin et al., 2021).
Mental health not only represents the development of cognitive abilities and skills but it is an indicator of individual adaptation and maturity in behavior. Multidimensional problems, issues, or conflicts lead individuals towards stress, anxiety and depression. Each individual has its own unique pattern of dealing with the conflicts and problems (Currie et al., 2016). The response to traumatic event or reaction after any conflicting situation depends on the wiring of psychological immune system.The main ingredient of psychological immune system is resilience, which helps to deal with the adverse situations and to solve problem effectively.
The psychological resource called Resilience is the main force to respond to the challenging and stressful situations. The word Resilience originates from Latin word Resilire, which means “to leap back”or “Flexibility”. It is an important resource of psychological immunity beside hope and gratitude behavior. Resilience represents the ability to stand back after severe stressful situations or after traumatic events in life. There are individual differences in the potential of resilience and in dealing with the stressful events. It represents psychological coping strategy with the stress. Resilience is a dynamic system of interaction with events in life. The facing of severe trauma in life and stand back with the even more strength than earlier represents adaptation quality of the individual. It is important to understand that resilience develops from the ordinary resources available to individuals and can be learned at any age. Sometimes it is assumed that to come out of any traumatic negative situation and to stand back in life again with same zeal or strength need extra ordinary power which is beyond every human potential or capacity, so very few people remain successful to overcome such situations. There are very few people who have faced certain severe adverse situation and came out of it through constant struggle and extraordinary willpower. Otherwise, generally the gifted potential of resilience is available to all of us to meet the threatening challenges of life. This consideration about the common resilience empowerment is an optimistic approach and it gives way to view all individuals to be able to bear and overcome the stressful events of life successfully.