Resilience as a dynamic concept

The concept of resilience has as its starting point the recognition that there is huge heterogeneity in people's responses to all manner of environmental adversities. Resilience is an inference based on evidence that some individuals have a better outcome than others who have experienced a comparable level of adversity; moreover, the negative experience may have either a sensitizing effect or a strengthening "steeling" effect in relation to the response to later stress or adversity. After noting the crucial importance of first testing for the environmental mediation of risk through "natural experiments," findings are reviewed on "steeling effects" in animal models and humans. Gene-environment interaction…