Whatever does not kill us: cumulative lifetime adversity, vulnerability, and resilience.

By Mark D Seery, A. Holman, R. Silver, D. Mark, Seery, We, Michael Poulin, D. Mcintosh, Virginia Gil-Rivas, Judith Andersen and 4 more. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2010

917 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Exposure to adverse life events typically predicts subsequent negative effects on mental health and well-being, such that more adversity predicts worse outcomes. However, adverse experiences may also foster subsequent resilience, with resulting advantages for mental health and well-being. In a multiyear longitudinal study of a national sample, people with a history of some lifetime adversity reported better mental health and well-being outcomes than not only people with a high history of adversity but also than people with no history of adversity. Specifically, U-shaped quadratic relationships indicated that a history of some but nonzero lifetime adversity predicted relatively lower global distress, lower self-rated functional impairment, fewer posttraumatic stress symptoms, and higher life satisfaction over time. Furthermore, people with some prior lifetime adversity were the least affected by recent adverse events. These results suggest that, in moderation, whatever does not kill us may indeed make us stronger.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0eb531acd39a00ab684907c81f4ef10b35b2e940

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Citations in the corpus

Stress and wellbeing in urban college students in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic: Can grit and gratitude help? (2020, background): “Studies have shown that those who experience hardship may ultimately become more resilient (Seery et al., 2010).”
Post–traumatic Growth as Positive Personality Change: Evidence, Controversies and Future Directions (2014, background): “…and argued that moderate Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology stress may be linked to mean-level changes in traits associated with psychological maturity such as mastery and toughness (Seery et al., 2010, p. 1038), although this specific hypothesis remains untested.”
Positive affectivity predicts successful and unsuccessful adaptation to stress (2013, background): “…revealed a summative relationship between the two predictors, meaning that while high stress levels led to teacher burnout, positive affect had a restorative effect which reduced the accumulation of stress and prevented the precipitation of teacher burnout (Fredrickson 2000; Seery et al. 2010).”
The resilience framework as a strategy to combat stress-related disorders (2017, neutral): “…cope with stressors— whether this manifests at the level of altered perspectives on life 17–19 , as emergence of new strengths or competences 16 , as partial immunization against the effects of future stressors 20,21 , or even as epigenetic alterations and modified gene expression patterns 22,23 .”
Imprint–environment Fit and Performance (2014, background): “Seery, M. D., E. A. Holman, and R. C. Silver 2010 ‘‘Whatever does not kill us: Cumulative lifetime adversity, vulnerability, and resilience.’’”
RESILIENCE TRAINING THAT CAN CHANGE THE BRAIN (2018, background): “…(2017); Brascher et al. (2016) Stress inoculation Experience with moderate stressors toughens one against future stress MPFC, HPA Dienstbier (1989); Seery, Holman, and Silver (2010); Parker, Buckmaster, Schatzberg, and Lyons (2004); Katz et al. (2009); Maier (2015); Russo, Murrough, Han, Charney,…”
When Criminal Coping is Likely: An Extension of General Strain Theory (2013, background): “While such individuals may be disadvantaged in terms of such things as financial resources and family support, they often possess one or more ‘‘protective factors’’ that facilitate various types of legal coping (for overviews, see American Psychological Association 2008; Daigle et al. 2010; Koball e”
More than a feeling: A unified view of stress measurement for population science (2018, background): “challenge offers a way for researchers to interpret how the same stressor might be harmful for some but not all people, and that some stressors might in fact be beneficial (Sapolsky, 2015; Seery et al., 2010).”
Toward a Dual-Systems Model of What Makes Life Worth Living (2013, background): “Seery, Holman, and Silver (2010) have documented that a history of moderate amount of adversity leads to better mental health than either a high history or no history of adversity.”