Search

Psychological resilience is indicated when individuals demonstrate good mental health despite exposure to significant stress or adversity. Good mental health may involve low levels of illbeing and/or high levels of wellbeing. There is still very limited knowledge about the potential differences between these outcomes in relation to stressors. We propose a distinction between type 1 and type 2 resilience, examine their underlying genetic and environmental architecture, and identify modifiable resilience factors. The data come from a population-based twin sample (N = 1987, mean age = 63) in the Norwegian Twin Registry. Type 1 and type 2 resilience are operationalised as the residual of anxiety/depression symptoms and life satisfaction, respectively, after lifetime cumulative adversity has been regressed out. We used biometric modelling and cotwin-control linear mixed models to estimate underlying factors and identify predictors while controlling for genetic confounding. The results support the notion of two separate, but partly overlapping types of resilience. We find heritabilities of 0.30 (type 1) and 0.24 (type 2) and a genetic correlation of 0.43. Potentially causal resilience factors include, but are not limited to, meaning in life, physical activity, positive affect and relationship satisfaction. Whereas some factors are associated with both resilience types, other factors are unique to each type.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is not only a threat to physical health but is also having severe impacts on mental health. Although increases in stress-related symptomatology and other adverse psycho-social outcomes, as well as their most important risk factors have been described, hardly anything is known about potential protective factors. Resilience refers to the maintenance of mental health despite adversity. To gain mechanistic insights about the relationship between described psycho-social resilience factors and resilience specifically in the current crisis, we assessed resilience factors, exposure to Corona crisis-specific and general stressors, as well as internalizing symptoms in a cross-sectional online survey conducted in 24 languages during the most intense phase of the lockdown in Europe (22 March to 19 April) in a convenience sample of N = 15,970 adults. Resilience, as an outcome, was conceptualized as good mental health despite stressor exposure and measured as the inverse residual between actual and predicted symptom total score. Preregistered hypotheses (osf.io/r6btn) were tested with multiple regression models and mediation analyses. Results confirmed our primary hypothesis that positive appraisal style (PAS) is positively associated with resilience (p < 0.0001). The resilience factor PAS also partly mediated the positive association between perceived social support and resilience, and its association with resilience was in turn partly mediated by the ability to easily recover from stress (both p < 0.0001). In comparison with other resilience factors, good stress response recovery and positive appraisal specifically of the consequences of the Corona crisis were the strongest factors. Preregistered exploratory subgroup analyses (osf.io/thka9) showed that all tested resilience factors generalize across major socio-demographic categories. This research identifies modifiable protective factors that can be targeted by public mental health efforts in this and in future pandemics.