Resilience and mental distress in major global disruptions
RESPOND collaborators and researchers from the EU Horizon project DynaMORE at the Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research have recently published a review article on the topic of resilience to distress and stress-related mental health problems in major global disruptions with specific reference to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The researchers looked at individual-level mental responses to pandemic-related societal stressors and found that these responses were similar to responses to more typical macro-stressors (e.g., divorce), with the exception that “recovery trajectories” were less common during the pandemic. Responses may also vary in younger and older age groups.
In line with previous research, it was found that the complexity of resilience in the context of the pandemic could neither be accounted for by single resilience factors nor their sum. The authors call for better consideration of individual stressor exposure and for a lifespan perspective in resilience research to better address this complexity.