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Resilience and Well-Being

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Mental Health and Older People

Abstract

The need to improve the treatment and management of long-term conditions is one of the most important challenges facing the NHS. The idea of ‘resilience’ represents a paradigm shift to a treatment model that promotes positive adaptation, using an asset-based model of resilience, in the context of long-term health issues.

In 2002, Ganong and Coleman suggested that we have entered the ‘age of resilience’. Indeed the term appears to have proliferated over the last 10–15 years: a quick Internet search reveals, for example, psychological resilience, ecosystem resilience and resilience in relation to peak oil, to the ability of a city to resist a terrorist attack and to a number of organizations dedicated to promoting resilience of individuals, cities and systems. A search for well-being produces similar, although perhaps not as prolific, results. Resnick et al. draw attention to the value of resilience as espoused through traditional adages and mythology, and, we would add, through now ubiquitous phrases that have entered popular culture (e.g. ‘Keep calm and carry on’), that also espouse resilience.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

(Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 1929)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute for Primary Care and Health Sciences, Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire, UK

    Jane C. Richardson BA (Hons.), MSc, PhD & Carolyn A. Chew-Graham MD, FRCGP

Authors
  1. Jane C. Richardson BA (Hons.), MSc, PhD
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  2. Carolyn A. Chew-Graham MD, FRCGP
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Correspondence to Jane C. Richardson BA (Hons.), MSc, PhD .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Keele University, Newcastle Under Lyme, Staffordshire, United Kingdom

    Carolyn A. Chew-Graham

  2. Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire, United Kingdom

    Mo Ray

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Richardson, J.C., Chew-Graham, C.A. (2016). Resilience and Well-Being. In: Chew-Graham, C., Ray, M. (eds) Mental Health and Older People. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29492-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29492-6_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-29490-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-29492-6

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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