I enjoyed the article Matters of the mind: Response, resilience and recovery — the three-dimensional strategy for mental health
"Recovery is about dropping your past or better yet, learning from it, in both cases, shifting the focus to our present."
Resilience, or bouncing back from adversity, “the capacity of individuals to navigate their way to the psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources that sustain their well-being and their capacity individually and collectively to negotiate for these resources to be provided and experienced in culturally meaningful ways”. Resilience needs rationality. It needs us to shift focus on what is okay, better, not bad or actually good in what is happening.
Lately I've been seeing how important active coping and perceived social support, “a network of family, friends, neighbors, and community members that is available in times of need to give psychological, physical, and other help” are. The quality of relationships (functional dimension) is a better predictor of good health than quantity of relationships (structural dimension), although both are important. “Studies on how social connectedness enhances resilience, from a neuro-biological and a psychological stand-point, are extremely compelling.” [1]
While passive coping is characterised by feelings of helplessness, relying on others for stress resolution and is associated with vulnerability to psychopathology such as disengagement or aggression when challenged with the threat of social stigma, characteristics of active coping that reduce stress and symptoms of mental illness include the following: creating a sense of coherence in their lives or in the community, exercising self-control, developing a strong sense of identity, maintaining a realistic perception of threat, possessing optimism , having a sense of purpose, and the use of problem-focused coping [2]
It has been stressed the importance of social support as a protective factor, identifying various beneficial aspects such as the size and extent of the individual’s social network, the frequency of social interactions, the perception that social interactions have been beneficial, emotional and cognitive social support, etc.
While social interaction reward is a protective factor allowing effective coping to build resilience, lack of social support during social exclusion from peer groups and social subordination can increase the risk of developing a psychiatric illness. These negative social factors markedly increase the likelihood of substance use [3]
Social isolation also induces depression-like symptoms such as anhedonia (decreased ability to experience pleasure) . Indeed, socially isolated animals showed a reduced motivation in the pursuit of ‘wanting’ a reward ie motivational anhedonia. Altogether, these studies suggest that social isolation affects brain reward and stress systems.
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