The life course of psychological resilience: A phenomenological perspective on deflecting life's slings and arrows.

Notably lacking in the promising new literature on psychological resilience are longitudinal studies of adults who have not only survived extreme early life stresses, but have actually thrived in the face of them. The present study compared 31 resilient adults who were middle-aged, upper-middle class and well educated with 19 controls from comparable life circumstances who had not been exposed to severe early adversity. The experimental group reported exceedingly high scores for early life stress, with emotional abuse by parents being the most pervasive compliant. They felt and showed extreme signs of emotional oppression as children, but normal (or even superior) intellectual development. The majority sought and received substantial support outside the family, including religious counseling and formal psychotherapy, but healing was tediously slow and probably not entirely complete. Most attributed their success to relentless effort and self-reliance, but the groups did not differ significantly on psychological measures of internal locus of control. "Transcenders" appeared remarkably normal as adults, showing significant improvement in interpersonal relations. Their self-descriptions of exceptional fortitude may have been slightly exaggerated but probably contributed to their growing self-esteem. There was only limited support for the hypothesis that resilient people become scrupulously appropriate in their own parenting attitudes and behavior. Their enthusiasm to promote disclosure about their stressful early lives, and about the possibilities for successful outcome seemed to fulfill altruistic needs to counter the popular myth that extreme adversity in early life inexorably leads to adult patholog, and also provided some validation for themselvesas people.

The science of prevention. A conceptual framework and some directions for a national research program.

A conceptual framework for studying the prevention of human dysfunction is offered. On the basis of recent advances in research on the development of psychological disorders and methods of preventive intervention, generalizations about the relation of risk and protective factors to disorder are put forward, along with a set of principles for what may be identified as the science of prevention. Emerging themes from the study of human development, in general, need to be incorporated in the models for explaining and preventing serious problems of human adaptation. The article concludes with a set of recommendations for a national prevention research agenda.

Academic performance in children of divorce: psychological resilience and vulnerability.

Parental divorce can be conceptualized as a stressful event for all children, but one must recognize that reactions to divorce can vary widely among children. This investigation was based on two basic ideas: 1) children of divorce as a group would show deficits in academic performance compared to children from intact families, even several years after their parents' separation, and 2) because factors that promote psychological resilience and vulnerability, we expected to find normal heterogeneity within the divorce sample. Among 96 middle-school adolescents from a suburban school district near Denver, children of divorce showed significant performance deficits in academic achievement, as reflected in grade-point average and scholastic motivation in middle school, but not in nationally normed tests of scholastic aptitude and other less direct measures of behavioral conformity. An analysis of GPA over time revealed strikingly disparate patterns of achievement between divorce and control groups. Corresponding patterns of scholastic aptitude scores, absence from school and comportment revealed no systematic differences over time. These results suggest strongly that parental divorce can be a critical event in the academic development of children. Large differences in academic achievement between our divorce group as a whole and the controls cannot be attributed, at least at the time of sampling, to differences in social class or intellectual ability. Despite a similar family background, i.e., marital dissolution, a minority of the children of divorce showed vulnerability in the pattern of academic achievement over time while the majority demonstrated academic careers not unlike that of the controls.

High-risk-for-schizophrenia research: sampling bias and its implications.

The use of parental diagnosis in risk-for-schizophrenia identification has inadvertently resulted in two major sampling biases: an overrepresentation of females among index parents and a 100 percent concordance for schizophrenia between affected target offspring and their parents. The overrepresentation of females among index parents may increase the heterogeneity of the schizophrenic sample by virtue of either misdiagnosis or inclusion of atypical, schizoaffective schizophrenics. Thus, the target samples studied in current high-risk research are not only psychometrically unrepresentative of all schizophrenics, but also may contain a substantial number of offspring with atypical, largely affective schizophrenias. Complementary risk identification strategies are discussed, and the nature of the schizophrenias as a heterogeneous group of disorders is emphasized.

Longitudinal social competence and adult psychiatric symptoms at first hospitalization.

Patterns of psychiatric symptoms of 141 patients at first hospital admission were correlated with social competence, as measured in childhood from school records and in adulthood by the Index of Social Competence, which is based on hospital records. Results confirmed the hypothesis that low social competence is associated with the more disintegrative symptoms of withdrawal, thought disorder, and antisocial acting out, but this conclusion held only when the measure of social competence was based upon adult premorbid behavior. A longitudinal perspective on social competence did not improve upon the symptomatic discrimination based on adult cross-sectional assessment alone, except that a cluster of schizoid symptoms (apathy, flat affect, hallucinations, resentfulness, and verbal hostility) was significantly associated with a longitudinal measure of social competence, though not with either cross-sectional measure by itself. Positive symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, and other florid processes) appeared not to be part of a longstanding, longitudinal process, but the negative symptoms included in the withdrawal cluster showed some association with childhood behavior.

Childhood behaviour in schizophrenia, personality disorder, depression, and neurosis.

Teachers' comments in the childhood school records (grades K-12) of 143 psychiatric patients and their matched controls were coded along 23 bipolar dimensions. Two methods of grouping these scales were compared: rational clusters and factor analysis. Factor analysis yielded more numerous and narrowly defined behavioural groupings. Schizophrenics, personality disorder patients, neurotics, and depressives were compared to their matched controls on each of the cluster and factor scores. Both schizophrenics and personality disordered patients were significantly less agreeable in childhood than their respective controls. Pre-schizophrenics also were significantly more unstable. Depressives were more independent than their controls, while neurotics did not differ significantly in any respect from normals in childhood. The data suggest that schizophrenia may have specific developmental patterns of possible aetiological or early diagnostic significance.

Patterns of childhood social development in adult schizophrenics.

Previous analysis of teachers' comments in school records of schizophrenics showed progressive deviance in their childhood social behavior and sharp differences between the sexes. This report presents a replication of the longitudinal study and a reanalysis of the combined samples. The principal findings from the earlier study were confirmed: in the later school years, preschizophrenic girls were primarily introverted and preschizophrenic boys mainly disagreeable. In the new study, the preschizophrenic girls were also emotionally unstable, introverted, and passive from kindergarten through grade 6, suggesting in earlier history of social disengagement than was previously apparent, and the preschizophrenic boys were emotionally unstable in grades 7 through 12, confirming a nonsignificant trend in the original study. The boys were not behaviorally distinguishable from other boys in elementary grades, so the notion of progressive deviance appears more applicable in their case.