Resilience to Violence

Two criteria for resilience

1) positive adaptation

2) risk

Risk/Childhood adversity

Any negative experience that children may experience that is unexpected for normative development and that they need to adapt to

ACEs and mental health

ACEs are highly prevalent and interrelated

ACEs associated with maladaptive family functions are the strongest predictors of mental health problems

Risk predicts risk (cumulative risk)

Risk can have snowballing effects, likelihood of problems increases with the number of risk factors that are present

Major risk factors may predict more complex risk 

(comorbid => simultaneously existing)

Resilience waves

1) Identifying resilient individuals

• Descriptive → “what” questions

2) Understanding resilience processes

• “how” questions

3) Promoting resilience (interventions)

• “can” questions

4) Integrating systems and contexts

• Dynamic systems → multiple domains

Mediation vs moderation

How or why a relationships works

• lies between predictor and outcome → processes

When or for whom a relationship holds

• is there an interaction depending on something → e.g. protective factors

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model

• Microsystem: smalles and most immediate environment

• Mesosystem: interactions between the different microsystems

• Exosystem: linkages between two or more settings, that may not contain the children but do affect them

• Chronosystem: time period and developmental time

Developmental systems theory

A person’s development is affected by the complex interactions of several systems external to the individual, embedded in multiple ecological layers (wave 2)

Resilience definitions

Capacity (potential or manifested) of a dynamic system to adapt successfully to disturbances that threaten system function, viability, or development

Positive adaptation or development in the context of significant adversity exposure

Positive adaptation

Competence or succes in age-salient developmental tasks

Developmental cascades

Absence of mental health problems (?)

Resilience trajectories

1) stress resistant/invulnerable

• individuals that continue to do well despite stress

2) trauma and recovery (late bloomers)

• no restriction when recovery takes place

3) major shift/normalisation

• don’t do well but get better after event

4) post-traumatic growth

• doing well and do even better after event

Resilience trajectories implications

Resilience is dynamic

• within a person

• between people

Resilience processes likely vary for different trajectories

Timing matters:

• come to different conclusions at timing of labelling as (non-)resilient

Ordinary magic

Resilience is common and rises from ordinary human resources and protective factors

Risk factors

Established predictors of undesirable outcomes, where there is evidence suggesting a higher-than-usual probability of a future problem

Cumulative risk

Risk factors rarely appear in isolation in the lives of children, but often occur in batches or pile up over time

Developmental tasks

The expectations for behaviour and accomplishments shared by members of a community or society for people of different ages

Goal of resilience studies

To inform efforts to change the odds in favour of positive adaptation and development

Late bloomer

Turning their life around in the transition to adulthood, during a period of development that may offer a window of opportunity for the emergence of resilience in young people whose lives are offtrack

Risk activated moderation

Triggered by the risk factor and moderates impact on the individual

Competence vs resilience

How well is someone doing?

How well is someone doing despite facing ACEs and stressors?

Predictors of competence/resilience

• Intelligence and good cognitive skills

• Positive self-worth

• Happiness

• Specific personality traits

• Positive relationships

• Good parenting

• High socioeconomic resources

3 aspects of developing competence (development favours competence)

1) Positive manifold

• doing well in one domain helps to do well in others (same time)

2) Competence begets competence

• stability of symptoms and achievements over time

3) Developmental cascades

• doing well in one domain leads to doing well in another over time

Competence

A pattern of effective performance in the environment based on salient developmental tasks

Executive functioning (EF)

Voluntary management of one’s own mental and physical capabilities to meet a goal

Umbrella term for higher cognitive functions that help set and carry out goals (e.g. working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility)

Personality traits related to competence

1) Higher openness to experience

2) Conscientiousness

3) Agreeableness

4) Lower neuroticism

5) Extraversion (?)

Predictors of success in school

1) EF skills

2) Parenting

Three major categories of EF skills

1) Working memory

2) Cognitive flexibility

3) Effortful or inhibitory control

The role of stress

Stress plays a central role in the processes by which poverty or homelessness affect child development, direct and indirect

Preventing or reducing stress through interventions is itself a protective action, fundamental for changing the odds of resilience

Dose effects

There is generally higher risk for symptoms, suffering, and other consequences of mass trauma when children are exposed with greater frequency or intensity and there is a piling up of severely threatening or traumatic experiences

Dose matters

• Emotional proximity can have more effects than physical proximity

• Dose effects often diminish with time

• Differs across age and sex:

  • Older more exposure

  • Boys: fighting

  • Girls: rape

Social referencing

Children read the emotion state of their parents as a source of information about what is happening and safety

Steeling effects / stress inoculation

Manageable exposures to adversity for (optimal) development

Important attributes for adaptation

• General intelligence

• Cognitive control

• Agency (or self-efficacy)

• Personality traits

Community resilience

A set of networked adaptive capacities, facilitated by resources in the domains of economic development, information/communication, social capital, and what they term community competence

Nature vs nurture

Everything that happened before conception → genetics

Everything that happened after conception → environment

(The same gene can have different outcomes in different contexts)

Heritability

The genetic impact on trait differences within a particular population (the rest is due to nurture)

HPA system

Releases cortisol when facing stress because it is an adaptive hormone that regulates the stress response

If this stress response is constantly activated in the home as the child grows it has a negative effect on how the brain develops

Intelligence

Individual differences in thinking and problem solving related to learning and adapting to the environment

Effective families

• Involved

• Responsive

• Open and flexible

• Connected to community

• Active in problem solving

• Providing age-appropriate autonomy to their children

Family roles, rules, and routines

The family system, usually led by parents, develops roles, rules, and routines that serve to maintain balance and growth, and also restore function when there is a disturbance

(4Rs: roles, rules, routines, restore)

Authoritative parenting

A combination of high warmth, structure, and high expectations (linked with competence)

(=> engaged, accepting, expecting)

Caregiving as foundation for attachment system

1) Safety, emotional security, and learning

2) Co-regulation to self-regulation

3) Scaffolding support

Co-regulation & self-regulation

Parents or caregivers serve as external modulators of arousal, emotion, and behaviour of young children until they can self-regulate

Social stress buffering

The presence (or thought) of the caregiver can lower and buffer the stress response the child shows

Effectance vs efficacy

People are biologically predisposed to engage with the environment in ways that promote learning and adaptation

The experienced feelings of satisfaction associated with perceived accomplishment related to his (effectance) motivation system

Mastery motivation

Powerful motivational system involved in learning and striving for adaptation and competence

Self-efficacy beliefs

The belief that you can overcome something is very important in resilience, it is vital, and parents and others play a crucial role in creating these beliefs

Scaffolding of support

• Pro-active in problem solving

• Providing age appropriate autonomy

• Reducing, but not minimising, risk

• Socialise the child to different social contexts

(Balance needs to be exactly right)

Family resilience

• Communication

  • Offer respite, empathy, and humour

• Beliefs

  • Meaning making, sense of coherence, hope, and optimism

• Organisation

  • Mobilise social and economic resources

Schools build resilience through

• Nutrition and health care programs

• Socio-emotional & cognitive skills

• Positive relationships

• Increased self-efficacy

• Opportunities

Effective schools

• Welcoming and supportive environment

• Strong leadership

• Effective classroom teachers:

  • Reduce disruptive behaviour

• Engaged students and parents

Communities, cultures, and societies

Faith, hope, and belief life has meaning

• “we’re all in this together”

Acculturation stress & cultural niche

Difficulties in dealing with cultural differences

The goals, beliefs, scripts, and routines that are often implemented by parents, influence daily life and thereby child socialisation and development

The immigrant paradox

First generation immigrant youth sometimes show better health and well-being than native-born youth or subsequent immigrant generations

Community resilience

• Flexible organisation

• Effective communication

• Distribution of resources

• Supporting social cohesion

Short list of resilience factors 

• Effective caregiving and parenting

• Close relationships with another capable adult

• Close friends and romantic partners

• Intelligence and problem-solving skills

• Self-control, emotion regulation, planfulness

• Motivation to succeed

• Self-efficacy

• Faith, hope, belief life has meaning

• Effective schools

• Effective neighbourhoods; collective efficacy

Temperament and personality

Which personality traits or temperament are desirable or good is culturally dependent

It is the function of the trait that matters, not the viewing of favourable or unfavourable

Stress regulation (homeostasis, allostasis, allostatic load)

H: return of the organism to healthy function across many biological systems following disturbances

A: adaptive processes that help regulate homeostasis

AL: allostasis in the service of maintaining essential aspects of homeostasis can take a toll on the body, a kind of cumulative wear and tear

Two primary ways family systems contribute to child resilience

1) by their own actions to influence the interactions of children with stressful experiences

2) through their influences on the development of adaptive capacity in the course of child rearing

Personality vs identity

How we are/how we behave

Who we are/what we are

Expensive vs cheap data

For social media:

Social media data but also surveying participants to get “ground truths”

Data already online but you don’t know the people or what kind of people they are

Natural language processing

Teaching AI and chatbots to have natural human speech patterns

Neuroticism & emotional stability

Tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily

Stable and calm personality

Digital/Online harm

The use of technology to hurt someone socially, emotionally, psychologically, or even physically

Can involve the use of digital technologies for harm in offline environments

Types of digital/online harm

1) Threat to personal and community safety

2) Harm to health and well-being

3) Hate and discrimination

4) Violation of dignity

5) Invasion of privacy

6) Deception and manipulation

Misinformation vs disinformation

Wrongful information unintentionally spread

Intentionally spreading false information

Digital resilience

A dynamic personal asset that is fostered through active engagement with relevant online opportunities and challenges

Four components:

1) understand (that they are at risk)

2) know (how to get help)

3) learn (from experience & adapt)

4) recover (with support)

3 levels of digital resilience

• Individual

  • Susceptibility and protective factors assisting recovery and growth after adversity

• Community

  • Social connectedness and social capital

• Societal

  • Capacity to prepare, prevent, and protect before event, absorb and adapt during, and restore, recover, and transform after

Cyberbullying

Intentional and repeated aggression in which adolescents use computers, mobile phones, and other technological devices to abuse, threaten, humiliate, or harass other youths who cannot defend themselves

Resilience and cyberbullying

Higher levels of resilience were related to fewer depression symptoms and greater life satisfaction following cyberbullying

Resilience buffers the effects of cyberbullying → protective factor

3 most apparent digital resilience tactics

• Social support networks

• Digital health

  • Physical and mental health support

• Digital identity

  • Relive memories

  • Emotional outlet

Code switching

Switching between distinctive normative frameworks of several audiences (e.g. being gay and Arab)

Two influential concepts to understand the effects of social, economic, and political factors on health

1) Social determinants of health

2) Structural violence

Structural violence

Galtung: violence is built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances

Farmer: the arrangements are structural because they are embedded in the political and economic organisation of our social world; they are violent because they cause injury to people

Structural competency

1) Role of social structures

2) Ways structural inequalities are naturalised

3) Impact of structures on global health

4) Structural interventions

5) Structural humility

Social determinants of health

Broadly defined as the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, and people’s access to power, money, and resources

Food insecurity

When people do not, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preference for an active and healthy life

Link low income and food insecurity

• Insecure, erratic (and unsafe) employment and income

  • Vulnerability to shock

• Nature of low income work: irregular hours, physically demanding

  • Limited time and energy to cook and shop

• Living in a marginalised, underfunded neighbourhoud

  • Difficult to access adequate nutritious food

4 dimensions of food insecurity

• Running low or going without food

  • Quantitative deprivation

• Limited dietary variety or inability to eat cultural or nutritious food

  • Qualitative deprivation

• Lack of agency or anxiety in food choices

  • Psychological deprivation

• Being unable to maintain socially prescribed food behaviours

  • Social deprivation

Analytic omission

Personal and behavioural causes are over-emphasised and societal causes are minimised or ignored completely

Community resources

• Finance

• Infrastructure

• Diet diversity

• Mental health

• Social networks

• Community cohesion

A child “saving” and “welfarist” approach

Children as:

• Property of their parents

• Human becomings (vs human beings)

• Vulnerable and non-autonomous beings incapable of having clearly formed thoughts, views or preferences

Human rights law

Human rights law is a legal framework built around the relationship between the state and an individual:

• Every individual is a rights-holder

• The state is a duty-bearer

  • It must respect, protect, and fulfil those rights

Convention on the Rights of the Child

Provides a framework that aims to prevent risk factors leading to trauma and at the same time support adaptive systems that can help children build resilience

CRC and relationships

• Supporting the family

• Protect children’s rights and well-being within the family

• Promotes positive peer relationships

CRC and positive peer relationships (PPR)

• PPR are key resilience factors for children

• CRC provides legal framework, obligating states to:

  • Prevent peer violence

  • Actively promote and foster PPR

Levels of action

• International

• Regional

• National

• Non-state actors

Rights-based toolkit in advocacy

• Embedded (create) the rights message

• Identify rights allies and champions

• Monitor rights implementation

Types of CRC articles

• Provision

  • The right to get one’s basic needs fulfilled

• Protection

  • The right to be shielded from harmful acts or practices

• Participation

  • The right to be heard on decisions affecting one’s own life

Four general CRC principles

1) Non-discrimination and right to equality

2) Best interests of the child

3) Right to life, survival and development

4) Respect for the views of the child (participation principle)

Negative vs positive obligation

Obligations to refrain from violating a right

Obligations to take action through measures to realise a right