Resilience in Aging: An Interdisciplinary Approach From Childhood to Adulthood

Abstract

Introduction

One thing I have learned about revision is that sometimes I need to go back in order to move forward. Sometimes I need to return to those earlier versions—one, two, three—to find the spark that drove me to the page in the first place. What can I excavate from those earlier versions? What necessary fire can I restore to the present iteration?

(Smith, 2020, p. 10).

As an editor, this quote speaks to me about writing and life, and recently came to my thoughts while attending a conference on resilience. It reminds me that our earlier lives and iterations of who we were and what we experience impact us as we age.

Are there individualized paths to resilience? What is common about resilience versus other concepts and what is unique? How do childhood risk factors, including victimization and trauma, impact aging? What about those individuals who show extreme resilience to early life adversity? How does that impact resilience as we age? How do we support resilience across the lifespan? How do we address diversity and equity in resilience? How do we integrate genetics into resilience and what is the clinical utility of current tools? Can caregiving be a positive factor for resilience?

These are just a few of the questions that were pondered at the recent Bench-to-Bedside Conference Series: Stress Tests and Biomarkers of Resilience held on March 3–5, 2024, supported by the National Institute on Aging and the American Geriatrics Society (AGS). I was honored to attend as part of my role as AGS President and as a National Institutes of Health–funded nurse scientist investigating delirium and delirium in persons with dementia. My own work in persons with delirium and dementia focuses on knowing the person to understand the disease and wellness and emphasizes looking for resilience and observing and documenting the strengths of older adults and persons with disabilities (Fick, 2022).

This was the second conference in a series of three led by resilience researchers across disciplines from pediatrics to geriatrics, psychology, genetics, sociology, epidemiology, neurology, nursing, and others. The first conference in 2022 explored commonalities and differences among the frameworks of resilience most commonly used in aging research in the three domains of resilience: physical, cognitive, and psychosocial. A meeting summary was published in the August issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (Abadir et al., 2023). Themes of the first conference included underlying contributors to resilience, the dynamic nature of resilience throughout the life span, and the role of resilience in health equity. Although participants did not agree on a single definition of “resilience(s),” they identified common and unique features of resilience to add to a definition. The first conference led to multiple recommendations, including new longitudinal studies of the impact of exposures to stressors on resilience in older adults, preclinical models for resilience research, translational research to bring findings on resilience to patient care, and others. The current conference furthered this work with more presentations on topics such as measuring resilience through time series data, biomarkers and their utility, social and psychological impacts on resiliency, proteomics, childhood trauma, and others. We can look forward to a conference summary being published in the near future and another conference on interventions in 2025.

The most wonderful thing about these conferences for me is participating in round table discussions and mentoring breakfasts with future scholars who will carry this research forward (and perhaps at times return to their own earlier iterations of life to find their fire)—rising stars across all disciplines, junior faculty, and clinicians interacting with more senior researchers and NIH staff—all filled with passion for this work. For me, the measure of a successful conference is leaving wanting more and hoping to be invited back in 2025. I challenge you to think about how resilience fits in with your own work.

Donna M. Fick, PhD, GCNS-BC, AGSF,

FGSA, FAAN

Editor

• Abadir P. M., Bandeen-Roche K., Bergeman C., Bennett D., Davis D., Kind A., LeBrasseur N., Stern Y., Varadhan R., & Whitson H. E. (2023). An overview of the resilience world: Proceedings of the American Geriatrics Society and National Institute on Aging State of Resilience Science Conference. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 71(8), 2381–2392. 10.1111/jgs.18388
  > Crossref MedlineGoogle Scholar
• Fick D. M. (2022). Knowing the older adult with delirium superimposed on dementia. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 30(10), 1079–1082. 10.1016/j.jagp.2022.06.003
  > Crossref MedlineGoogle Scholar
• Smith M. (2020). Keep moving: Notes on loss, creativity, and change. Atria/One Signal Publishers.
  > Google Scholar