Elsevier

Psychoneuroendocrinology

Volume 32, Issues 8–10, September–November 2007, Pages 1149-1152
Psychoneuroendocrinology

SHORT COMMUNICATION
Factors associated with resilience in healthy adults

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2007.08.005Get rights and content

Summary

Mature defenses comprise one well-validated indicator of resilience. We investigated the relationships of resilience to trauma, attachment, temperament, cortisol, and cognitive performance in adult healthy volunteers. Participants were administered the Defense Style Questionnaire; the Relationship Questionnaire; the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, and the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire. Cortisol determinations included 24-h urinary, mean hourly plasma, response to low-dose dexamethasone suppression, and reactivity to the Trier social stress test (TSST). Mathematical performance during the TSST was quantified. Twenty-five women and 29 men participated. Resilience was significantly negatively correlated with childhood interpersonal trauma and with harm avoidance. Resilience was significantly positively correlated with urinary cortisol, secure attachment, reward dependence, and superior performance. In a linear regression analysis, the strongest predictor of resilience was childhood trauma, followed by math performance under stress and harm avoidance. We conclude that in young adults without manifest psychiatric disorder, resilience was associated with developmental, biological, and cognitive measures which merit further investigation.

Introduction

Resilience, the relative capacity for healthy adaptation to life adversities, has been increasingly identified as an important area of both research and clinical intervention, and its biopsychosocial substrates are becoming better elucidated (Charney, 2004). There are different ways that studies have defined and measured resilience, including overall psychosocial functioning, or measures of hardiness and coping skills (Connor and Zhang, 2006). The absence of major psychopathology, in and of itself, does not comprise an adequate indicator of resilience. Mature defenses (sublimation, humor, anticipation, and suppression) comprise one well-established model of positive mental health, powerfully predicting psychological well-being in a community male sample followed prospectively over 45 years (Vaillant and Vaillant, 1990), and comprising a validated indicator of resilience (Vaillant, 2003). In the current study of healthy volunteers, we explored the relationships between this index of resilience and several factors that have been implicated in healthy adaptation, namely temperament, childhood trauma, attachment style, baseline and stress-related cortisol measures, and cognitive performance under stress.

Section snippets

Methods

Healthy adult volunteers in this study were part of a larger study examining HPA axis function in dissociative disorders, PTSD, and normal control subjects (Simeon et al., 2007); data reported here are not replicated in the prior study. Participants were broadly recruited via newspaper advertisements and postings or were self-referred via internet websites and other resources. They were phone screened and, if appropriate, evaluated by a psychiatrist to determine eligibility. Inclusion criteria

Results

Participants were 25 women and 29 men, with a mean age of 33.2 years (SD=11.0). Resilience was fairly normally distributed in the sample (mean=5.7, SD=1.0, median=5.8, skewness=−0.20, kurtosis=−0.23, range=3.6–8). Resilience was not significantly associated with age or gender.

Childhood trauma total score ranged from 25 to 67, with a mean of 33.8 (SD=9.2). Trauma encountered in the sample ranged from none at all to substantial, such as separation from both parents for many years, witnessing

Discussion

Determinants of resilience include neurobiological, genetic, temperamental, and environmental influences (2). Our findings present evidence for three of these domains in a single sample of adult participants without psychiatric disorders: temperament, attachment, childhood interpersonal trauma, urinary cortisol, and cognitive performance under stress. In this sample, of all variables measured resilience was most strongly associated (negatively) with childhood trauma. Childhood adversity has

Role of funding source

Supported in part by NIMH RO1 MH62414 to Dr. Simeon and NIH MO1 RR0071 to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine General Clinical Research Center.

Conflict of interest

None declared.

Acknowledgments

Dr. Simeon was supported in part by NIMH RO1 MH62414 and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine General Clinical Research Center by NIH MO1 RR0071.

References (19)

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