Coping With Adversity: Testing the Origins of Resiliency in Mental Health

This paper examines the multi-dimensional nature of resiliency to risk in mental health, and tests regression models of differential resiliency, based on two hospital-based clinical research projects. The first project involves adult children of problem drinkers, individuals who are at greater risk to alcohol abuse given their parents' pathology. The second involves schizophrenics diagnosed with varying dispositions to depression. The analyses reveal that for both adult children of problem drinkers and for schizophrenics, individuals have varying degrees of susceptibility to adversity and that these variations are based, to a large degree, on psychosocial concerns. Furthermore, the results show quite clearly that men and women suffer to varying degrees when exposed to the same kinds of adversity, and that the causal origins of resiliency are different for men and women.