[Stress-Strain-Recovery-Resilience: how do all these fit together?]

Abstract

From a psychological point of view resilience is closely related to aspects of stress. As a further development of the classical stress model, the skills of individuals are described in the context of psychological resource models which enable an appropriate coping with situations that trigger stress. These differential aspects of the stress reaction are frequently highlighted in the literature on psychology. Based on a sophisticated description of stressors (i.e., environmental stimuli which are able to induce stress) characters of a person, such as personality, age, gender and strategies of coping are responsible for the expression of the stress response. The individual "translation" of the effects of stressors into a (stress) response is mediated by various somatic systems and aspects of emotionality. At the different levels of the stress reaction restoration processes occur which are helpful in modifying the potentially harmful effects of stressors and a homeostasis is restored. These restoration processes can be systematically described as a buffer function for the extent of a stress reaction and can be influenced in a targeted way. Therefore, the term resilience which has been used for some time appears to be a type of metaphor for psychological processes which have been known for a long time in the context of psychological research on stress and recovery.