Resilience (psychological)

Resilience is a commonly used concept in psychology (such as in child development, adolescent development, psychopathology, and positive psychology) to describe the positive capacity of people to cope with stress and catastrophe. It is also used to indicate a characteristic of resistance to future negative events. In this sense "resilience" corresponds to cumulative "protective factors" and is used in opposition to cumulative "risk factors". The phrase risk and resilience in this area of study is quite common. Commonly used terms, which are essentially synonymous within psychology are resilience, psychological resilience, emotional resilience, hardiness, and resourcefulness.

Development
During the 1990's, enhancing resilience, for example through social support and stress inoculation programs such as outdoor education, became an increasingly sought goal of community intervention efforts.

Two important principles that have been discovered in cumulative risk and resilience are those of developmental trajectories and clustering of factors. (Cairins & Cairns, n.d.).