Risk and Resilience

I agree and disagree with certain accepts of this statement. One could possibly possess a gene that has the potential to develop into a mental disorder but in order to do so it would need to be triggered. Significant adversity, like abuse or divorce for example, could act as such trigger. But significant adversity can be counteracted by protected factors such as school or a grandparent. For example, with the film "Born into Brothels," many of the children experience significant adversity (verbal, some times psychical abuse). A handful of students were given a protective factor of being enrolled in a photography class. The photography class acted as a protective factor because it gives the children a chance to experience life outside the brothel. Along with protective factors, there are also risk factors. There are two types of risk factors independent and non-independent. Independent risk factors are factors that are out of one's control, such as divorce or death of a parent. Non-independent are events that occur do to one's own behavior, such as being kicked out of school. For example, if a child or adolescent is being abused at home they might act out by being cruel to animals or their peers. The DSM might look at an aggressive child and try to match them to a certain criteria for a disorder, but what they don't do is look at their home life to see what could be provoking these behaviors. This may be the child's way of adapting to the significant adversity they are exposed to at home. For a better understanding of a child's condition we would need to look at psychosocial competence, if their doing "okay" both mentally and socially. But what is okay? This brings up an important issue, what may be acceptable in one culture may not be in others. The DSM does not take culture or personal situations into consideration when diagnosing a disorder. For example, studies show that adolescent girls are experiencing depression and psychologists think its because culture is over-socializing them. There are many factors that need to be taken into account when diagnosing an individual, let alone a child. In order to do this we need to look into the Bronfenbenner's transactional model consisting of four subsections, mirco, meso, exo, and macrosystem. We need to take into consideration how these are affecting the individual. But we cannot forget that the individual may also be bringing in internal or biological factors such as their level of resilience. Resilience is not a trait or characteristic but more of an adaptation, the way in which they cope with significant adversity and how well they are able to display competence. For example, we are seeing children who experience significant adversity yet do not turn out the way we expect them to later in life, (depressed mother growing up we would assume the child would display signs of being depressed or anxious in the future). In conclusion there are genetic and