We’re all exhausted and pushed to the limit by months of social distancing, and the recent news that cases are climbing in many states is especially scary.
While you may feel like ripping off your mask and heading for a bar, there are more productive ways to deal with the challenges we face. And in fact, staying home may be the best course of action in the next couple of weeks, some experts have said. It’s also a good time to learn and practice resilience.
As a professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Connecticut, I believe these unprecedented changes have had a significant and adverse impact on the mental health of Americans. And there is no end in sight. If ever a moment called for understanding the concept of resilience, this is it.
Resilience is the ability to adapt to adversity or a stressful life event. Research on resilience has a rich history, dating back to the 1950s; those studies focused on children growing up in high-risk environments. More contemporary research looks at how we adapt to traumatic events like cancer, natural disasters and developing resilience important coronavirus surge cases
