Abstract
Resilience represents positive patterns of adaptation in the context of past or present adversity. From the standpoint of positive psychology, factors that affect resilience are positive personal, family, and/or environmental psychosocial characteristics of the individual. This study aimed to investigate the interplay of stress, personal, and social assets of children in the verge of adolescence with positive adaptation in Greece and Cyprus. A total of 248 male and female participants (158 from Greece and 90 from Cyprus) who attended the 5th and 6th grade of primary school completed a questionnaire battery. The battery comprised scales on life events, social support from the family, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and mental health problems. The results revealed distinct patterns of interconnections among the above variables in the two countries. In general, preadolescent children reporting actual negative life events seemed to draw on personal and social resources available to them, such as self-efficacy and support from their family, in order to maintain their sense of self-esteem and to avoid mental health problems. Nevertheless, age, gender, socioeconomic status, and academic achievement differences were also found to affect the manifestation of resilience under adversity in each country. The repercussions of the above findings for the study of resilience, as well as for parents, educators, mental health providers, and social policy makers, are significant.
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Notes
- 1.
Demographic and school attainment effects on the above relationships were negligible. Only academic performance (grade on mathematics) had an effect on the relationship between paternal support, actual negative events, and mental health problems: higher performance was associated with higher levels of support from the father.
- 2.
It is worth pointing out a discrepancy between perceived maternal and paternal social support regarding hypothetical negative life events for the total sample. Specifically, maternal support was highly and positively correlated with reported hypothetical, but not actual, negative life events, while paternal support was highly and negatively correlated with hypothetical events. This may be attributed to the more supportive and caring societal expectations and roles traditionally reserved for women (Barbee et al. 1993). This may mean that mothers are expected to and perceived as actually offering support to their offsprings, not only when the latter experience actual negative life events, but also hypothetical ones.
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Parts of this chapter (data collection and input) are based on the undergraduate thesis of T. Kollisianis and C. Monoyiou, completed under the author’s supervision.
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Leontopoulou, S. (2012). A Comparative Study of Resilience in Greece and Cyprus: The Effects of Negative Life Events, Self-Efficacy, and Social Support on Mental Health. In: Efklides, A., Moraitou, D. (eds) A Positive Psychology Perspective on Quality of Life. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 51. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4963-4_15
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