Resilience training for functioning adults: program description and preliminary findings from a pilot investigation.

It has previously been asserted that the construct of resilience holds great promise for diverse high-risk populations and that resilience may be an attribute that can be acquired through training. A rich body of literature suggests the strengths that comprise resilience. This paper describes a resilience training program based upon the identified strengths of resilience and provides additional preliminary data from a pilot investigation which lend support to the idea that resilience can be acquired through training. Suggestions for future research are provided.

Correlates of resilience in the face of adversity for Korean women immigrating to the US.

OBJECTIVES: To explore the association between resilience and psychosocial variables of theoretical relevance such as self-esteem, optimism, religiousness, cultural interdependency, and belief in higher education in a population of elderly Korean women and their daughters who experienced great adversity. METHODS: Surveys were conducted with 200 elderly Korean women and 170 of their daughters in several community locations. RESULTS: Both mothers and daughters experienced great adversities in their lives such as psychological and physical losses from war as well as current and past difficulties with relocation. The mothers' bivariate correlations indicate that self-esteem, optimism, religiousness, and cultural interdependency were significantly correlated with resilience. Length of time in the US, age entering the US, physical and psychological war-related adversities, current relocation difficulties, self-esteem, optimism, cultural interdependency, and belief in education were all significantly associated with daughters' resilience. In linear regression, self-esteem and optimism were significant predictors of resilience in both mothers and daughters. CONCLUSIONS: Self-esteem and optimism deserve further attention as psychological factors that may increase the likelihood of developing resilience. Implications of these findings for health professionals are discussed.

Preventive mental health education for functioning adults: stress, coping and mental health courses at the University of Maryland.

Three fifteen-week courses at the University of Maryland are described. These courses explore diverse cognitive-behavioral skills that facilitate coping, are preventive in nature, and are suitable for learning by healthy individuals in educational settings. Initial results, previously reported, are encouraging and suggest the possibilities that similar courses might be offered in other university, community or workplace settings.