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Resilience in Older Adults: What It Is and How to Strengthen It

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Resilience and Aging

Part of the book series: Risk, Systems and Decisions ((RSD))

Abstract

This chapter provides a comprehensive discussion on the concept of resilience and identifies underlying processes and areas for new discovery. It begins with its formative developments in psychology and transitions into application to the field of aging. This work is framed by an overarching resilience model based on Richardson (J Clin Psychol 58(3):307–321, 2002). A set of key resilience qualities and traits, and their underlying processes, are detailed and discussed based on research, ranging from spirituality to social relationships. These lead to a number of intervention strategies that show promise in strengthening resilience in older adults.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Nursing, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Barbara Resnick

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  1. Barbara Resnick
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Correspondence to Barbara Resnick .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Simon Fraser University, Gerontology Research Centre, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Andrew V. Wister

  2. Simon Fraser University, Gerontology Research Centre, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Theodore D. Cosco

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Resnick, B. (2020). Resilience in Older Adults: What It Is and How to Strengthen It. In: Wister, A.V., Cosco, T.D. (eds) Resilience and Aging. Risk, Systems and Decisions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57089-7_2

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