Risk & Resilience Flashcards
The case of “Mowgli girl” in India, 2017
8 year old girl found living with monkeys in remote nature reserve in northern India.
Walks on all fours and screeches to communicate.
Not yet known how she ended up in the wild or how long she had been there for.
Risk factors: definitions
Precede an outcome.
Statistically associated with it.
Stressors (situations or events) which increase the likelihood of a maladaptive outcome.
Threaten children’s basic needs and are associated with a range of difficulties in adjustment and adaptation concurrently and across the life span.
Categorising risk factors
Independent risk- outside the control of the individual (eg. death of loved one).
Non independent risk- under the control of the individual (eg. relationship).
Generic (eg. loss of friends) or normative (eg. change of school)
Acute (eg. an accident).
Chronic (eg. growing up in poverty, war etc).
Extreme deprivation case: Genie (Curtiss, 1977).
Father decided she was mentally retarded so socially isolated her since she was 20 months.
Rescued when 13 years- couldn’t walk, talk, functioned like 1 year olds.
Responded to treatments: learned to walk, improvement on non-verbal IQ.
Atypical language development- never asked questions, no use of pronoun, simple sentence structure, preferred to use gestures.
Child maltreatment
Sexual abuse: when they are forced or persuaded to take part in sexual activities. Doesn’t have to be physical contact- can be online.
Psychological/emotional abuse: ongoing maltreatment or emotional neglect. Can seriously damage child’s emotional health and development (eg. deliberately trying to scare or humiliate a child or isolating/ignoring them).
Physical abuse:deliberately hurting a child causing injuries such as bruises, broken bones, burns or cuts.
Neglect: ongoing failure to meet child’s basic needs and is most common form of child abuse. (eg. a child being left hungry or dirt without adequate clothing, shelter, supervision, medical or health care).
Prevalence of child maltreatment (ONS, 2016); N=1456
Highest age group for all abuse (excluding sexual) = 45-54. Any abuse: (approx). - 16-24= 13% - 25-34= 17% - 35-44= 20.5% - 45-54= 22% - 55-59= 20% For ages 25-59 percentages lie between 5 and 10% for each type of abuse. 16-24 above 5% for psychological.
Negative long-term outcomes associated with child maltreatment
Emotional difficulties such as anger, anxiety, sadness or low self-esteem.
Mental health problems such as depression, eating disorders, PTSD, self harm, suicidal thoughts.
Substance abuse.
Poor physical health such as obesity, aches and pains.
Parenting or relationship problems.
Learning difficulties, lower educational attainment, difficulties in communicating.
Behavioural problems including anti-social behaviour, criminal behaviour.
Risk factors? Which is worse?
Family or community?
Many family risk factors tie into community factors.
Eg. SES might determine which neighbourhoods are affordable.
Eg. parents with a criminal history might be more likely to live in certain neighbourhoods.
Flouri et al (2010): adjusted their data for the SES and education or parents, and found the link between neighbourhood and psychopathology was eliminated.
But Xue et al, (2005): found a significant relationship between community disadvantage and internalising behaviour problems after factoring in family demographics (US sample).
And McCulloch et al (2006) found that neighbourhood was equally important at predicting externalising behaviour problems (antisocial behaviours) as family factors.
Thus it is worth looking at both levels of analysis- family and community - when evaluating risk.
What is resilience?
Resilience is defined as “an ability to cope with adversity, stress and deprivation” (Begun, 93).
An ongoing developmental process.
Better than expected psychological outcomes despite adverse experiences.
Sustained competence under threat.
Recovery from trauma.
An ordinary phenomenon.
It is not always continuous nor does it apply in all situations.
It does not derive from avoidance of risk, but from the presence of protective factors/processes that buffer the effect of risk.
The concept of resilience: controversies and challenges
A shift from a deficit approach to a strengths model. Nevertheless:
- debates about conceptualisation of resilience.
- this can result in inconsistent findings and different estimates of resilient outcomes in similar risk samples.
- thus resilience should be defined in terms of a specific risk factor and a specific area in the outcome.
- resilience depends on the historical/cultural/developmental context.
- use of only one type of psychopathology as the outcome variable is problematic.
- methodological approaches in the study of resilience have raised considerations.
Protective/vulnerability factors
Protective factors: “those attributes or persons, environments, situations and events that appear to temper predictions of psychopathology based upon an individual’s at-risk status” (Garmezy, 83).
- impede of hinder the adverse impact of risk.
Vulnerability factors: “what individuals bring to a situation, experience, or context, including their past experiences and learning.” Risk and the contrasting protective factors are “factors extrinsic of individuals” (Begun, 93).
- protective and vulnerability factors can differ according to the developmental stage of the child, the developmental outcome being targeted, or the general environment (Sameroff & Gutman, 04).
Identifying protective factors
A review of the relevant research (Garmezy, 93) identified three broad sets of protective factors.
1) Personal characteristics of the child (ie. gender, intelligence and personality traits).
2) Family characteristics (ie. warmth, cohesion and structure).
3) External support systems (ie. peers and schools).
Promoting resilience in children
Resilience research has implication for policies and practice concerning vulnerable children and families.
Masten & Powell (03) outlined three types of interventions designs:
- risk focused: attempt to reduce the level of risk exposure.
- asset focused: attempt to directly provide higher quality and/or more quantity of assets in children’s lives.
- process orientated: attempt to improve the most important adaptational systems for children.
Interventions
By experimentally testing causal hypotheses about the relationship between risk, resilience and outcomes.
eg. McClain et al (2010): new beginnings program to improve child outcomes following parental divorce.
- increase mother-child relationship quality-> decrease internalising behaviours.
- increase effective discipline-> decrease externalising behaviours.
Strengthens our understanding of links between risk factors (divorce) protective factors (strong relationship and effective discipline) and specific outcomes (internalising and externalising behaviour).
Summary
Risk factors increase the likelihood of negative outcomes for individuals.
While many researchers have attempted to isolate individual risks, cumulative risk models might predict outcomes more effectively.
Protective factors mitigate risk. Some act at multiple levels of risk, others only have a effect at high levels of risk.
A thorough understanding of the concepts of risk and resilience is essential to develop interventions and promote positive developmental outcomes.
