New Directions: Looking at Psychological Dimensions in Resiliency Enhancement (From Drug-Free Youth, P 73-93, 1997, Elaine Norman, ed. - See NCJ-168217)

• NCJ Number: 168221
• Author(s): E Norman
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 21 pages
• Sale Source: Garland Publishing, Inc.
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: DCC

Annotation

This chapter explores and evaluates resiliency enhancement as a technique in juvenile drug abuse prevention.

Abstract

Resiliency enhancement programs attempt to enhance factors that protect against vulnerability and "enable sustained competent functioning" even in the presence of major life stressors. Interventions target enhancing the capacity of youngsters to withstand considerable hardship, difficulty and deprivation, focusing on finding, enhancing and encouraging the use of coping skills. Many strands of scholarship have joined to create this focus: (1) renewed emphasis on the ecological approach or person-environment interaction; (2) growing research literature on coping and stress; and (3) practitioners' disillusionment with the usefulness of the traditional clinical disease model that tended to explore pathology, injury, victimization and learned helplessness, and a need to focus on wellness and self-repair rather than problems and maladjustment. The chapter includes brief descriptions of four programs designed to increase resiliency. Figure, references