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- Title
Early-life predictors of resilience and related outcomes up to 66 years later in the 6-day sample of the 1947 Scottish mental survey.
- Authors
Harris, Mathew; Brett, Caroline; Starr, John; Deary, Ian; McIntosh, Andrew; Harris, Mathew A; Brett, Caroline E; Starr, John M; Deary, Ian J; McIntosh, Andrew M
- Abstract
<bold>Purpose: </bold>Psychological resilience, the ability to manage and quickly recover from stress and trauma, is associated with a range of health and wellbeing outcomes. Resilience is known to relate to personality, self-esteem and positive affect, and may also depend upon childhood experience and stress. In this study, we investigated the role of early-life contributors to resilience and related factors in later life.<bold>Methods: </bold>We used data from the 6-day sample of the Scottish mental survey 1947, an initially representative sample of Scottish children born in 1936. They were assessed on a range of factors between the ages of 11 and 27 years, and resilience and other outcomes at 77 years.<bold>Results: </bold>Higher adolescent dependability unexpectedly predicted lower resilience in older-age, as did childhood illnesses, while a count of specific stressors experienced throughout early life significantly predicted higher later-life resilience. We also observed significant cross-sectional correlations between resilience and measures of physical health, mental health, wellbeing and loneliness. Some of the associations between early-life predictors and later-life outcomes were significantly mediated by resilience.<bold>Conclusions: </bold>Our results support the hypothesis that stress throughout early life may help to build resilience in later-life, and demonstrate the importance of resilience as a mediator of other influences on health and wellbeing in older age. We suggest that the mechanisms determining how early-life stress leads to higher resilience are worthy of further investigation, and that psychological resilience should be a focus of research and a target for therapeutic interventions aiming to improve older-age health and wellbeing.
- Subjects
SCOTLAND; PSYCHOLOGICAL resilience; HEALTH &; psychology; MENTAL health; PSYCHOLOGICAL stress; PSYCHOLOGICAL well-being; AGE factors in well-being; PSYCHOLOGY; PSYCHIATRIC diagnosis; PSYCHIATRIC epidemiology; MENTAL illness; CHARACTER; LIFE change events; LONGITUDINAL method; RESEARCH funding; RISK assessment; SELF-perception; SURVEYS; CROSS-sectional method
- Publication
Social Psychiatry & Psychiatric Epidemiology, 2016, Vol 51, Issue 5, p659
- ISSN
0933-7954
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.1007/s00127-016-1189-4