Analytical Summary; Trauma, PTSD, and Resilience A Review of the Literature

Article:  Agaibi, C. E., & Wilson, J. P. (2005). Trauma, PTSD, and Resilience A Review of the Literature. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 6(3), 195-216.

Analytical Summary

Agaibi and Wilson (2005) review available research literature on trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and resilience to model the relationship between trauma, PTSD, and posttraumatic resilience. However, . The problem to start this research is the different response of people to trauma and the method of coping they follow and that to understand resilience they will understand trauma first. The authors’ motivation behind this research is that models of traumatic stress and adaptation can provide useful guidance to understand individuals’ responses to trauma and posttraumatic stress disorders and hence they can be used to understand, learn, and teach resilience. This work is significant in providing researchers a guidance model to use information regarding individuals’ traumatic experiences, their responses, and personality traits to understand and teach .

The authors define resilience as “the ability to adapt and cope successfully despite threatening or challenging situations.” The authors explain that resilience is the continuous ability of people to face dangerous traumas and bad events in good way. The authors limit the concept of resilience to focus more on posttraumatic resilience as can be seen in this definition, “Resiliency connotes strength, flexibility, a capacity for mastery, and resumption of normal functioning after excessive stress that challenges individual coping skills.” This means that resiliency is the power and ability to become normal after trauma. “Resilience is not gender specific and does not increase or decrease with age (Zeidler & Endler, 1996). This information from Zeidler and Endler (1996) explains that resilience is independent of gender and age.  The authors say that resilience depend upon psychological and emotional development.

This article complements the work of Straussner and Calnan (2014) in the sense that both discuss trauma and resilience. However, this article is more focused at posttraumatic resilience and it extends and expands the understanding of trauma to be used as a paradigm to understand and promote resilience. This article define resilience as “the ability to adapt and cope successfully despite threatening or challenging situations.” Straussner and Calnan (2014) define it “the capacity to form caring relationships.” One research talk about resilience at different times of life and the other article explain resilience after trauma.