Excerpts:
Stress: The effect of anything in life to which people must adjust.
Stress requires us to adjust our attention and behavior and makes demands on our energy.
Stressor: Anything that has the effect of causing stress.
Stress
Capacity: The amount of stress a person can carry, since each person has some stress in their lives.
Stress Load: This refers to the amount, or quantity, of stress a person
has in their lives.
Red Cross, 2002
Defining Coping
Constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific
external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of a person (Folkman & Lazarus,
1984, p. 141)
...anything people do to adjust to the challenges and demands of stress…
any adjustments made to reduce the negative impact of stress (Red Cross: Community-based Psychological Support, p. 87)
Defining Resilience
A pattern of positive adaptation in the context of past or present adversity
Wright & Masten, 2005
Key Concepts in Resilience Research
Adversity: Environmental conditions that interfere with/threaten the
accomplishment of age-appropriate developmental tasks
Risk: An elevated probability of an undesirable outcome
Risk Factor: A measurable characteristic in a group of individuals
or their situation that predicts negative outcome on a specific criteria
Cumulative Risk: Increased risk due to (a) multiple risk factors present;
(b) multiple occurrences of same risk factor; (c) accumulating effects of ongoing adversity
Vulnerability: Individual susceptibility to undesirable outcomes
Proximal Risk: Risk factors experienced directly by the child
Distal Risk: Risk related to a child’s ecological context, but
mediated via proximal processes
Asset/Resource/Compensatory Factor: A measurable characteristic in
a group of individuals or their situation that predicts general/specific positive outcomes
Protective Factor: Quality of a person/context or their interaction
that predicts better outcomes
Cumulative Protection: Presence of multiple protective factors
Psychosocial Competence: The adaptive use of personal and contextual
resources to accomplish developmental tasks
Developmental Tasks: Expectations of a society for child’s accomplishments
according to stage of development
