Excerpts:
Resilience is the human capacity to prepare for, recover from and adjust to life in the face of stress,
adversity or trauma, she said, [Navy Rear Adm. Karen Flaherty, director of the Navy's Nurse Corps and deputy chief of the
Bureau of Medicine's wounded, ill and injured section] and can be gained, lost and taught.
Resilience is a result of biology, the environment and the choices people make, Flaherty said. "It is important
for us to understand how individuals, families and units can build resilience and can be better prepared to adapt and even
thrive in stressful environments," she said.
In the military, units also must be resilient, Flaherty said, and that happens with high morale, unit cohesion,
pride in the unit's mission and pride in leaders. Units that face adversity can even strengthen their resilience, she said,
as they become more agile and can adapt easier.
Individuals can increase resilience through common-sense strategies such as getting enough sleep, eating
correctly and exercising, she said. It also helps for commanders to use after-action reports and critiques to encourage troops
to talk about their experiences, she added.
Developing resilience is not a science, and it will take years to determine what works best. "But we need
to move now," she said. "We'll know more in five years, but we know more today than we did a year ago, so we act upon what
we know and move forward.
