Resilience

RESILIENCE: THE SCIENCE OF MASTERING LIFE’S GREATEST CHALLENGES

by Dennis S. Charney, MD – Dean Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

RESILIENCE PRESCRIPTION

1. Positive Attitude
   • Optimism is strongly related to resilience
   • Optimism is, in part, genetic but can be learned (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy)
   • Neurobiological Mechanisms: Reward circuits, converse of learned helplessness
2. Cognitive Flexibility through Cognitive Reappraisal
   • Traumatic experiences can be re-evaluated by altering the perceived value and meaningfulness of the event
   • One can receive a benefit from stress and trauma: one can reframe, assimilate, accept and recover. These skills can be learned.
   • Failure is an essential ingredient for growth
   • Neurobiological Mechanisms: Memory Reconsolidation, Cognitive Control of Emotion, Memory Suppression
3. Embrace a Personal Moral Compass
   • Develop a set of core beliefs that very few things can shatter
   • For many, faith in conjunction with strong religious and/or spiritual beliefs is associated with resilience
   • Altruism has been strongly related to resilience. Survivor Mission.
   • Neurobiological Mechanisms: Neural Model of Human Morality, Altruism & Human Evolution

THE STOCKDALE PARADOX

Excerpted from hardcopy of webinar slides

Resilience and Mental Health: Challenges Across the Lifespan. Edited by Steven M. Southwick, Brett T. Litz, Dennis Charney and Matthew J. Friedman. Cambridge University Press 2011. 

Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Challenges. Steven M. Southwick, MD with Dennis S. Charney, MD. Cambridge University Press 2012.