Background Psychological resilience – positive psychological adaptation in the context of adversity – is defined and measured in multiple ways across disciplines. However, little is known about whether definitions capture the same underlying construct and/or share similar correlates. This study examined the congruence of different resilience measures and associations with sociodemographic factors and body mass index (BMI), a key health indicator. Methods In a cross-sectional sample of 1429 African American adults exposed to child maltreatment, we derived four resilience measures: a self-report scale assessing resiliency (perceived trait resilience); a binary variable defining resilience as low depression and posttraumatic stress (absence of distress); a binary variable defining resilience as low distress and high positive affect (absence of distress plus positive functioning); and a continuous variable reflecting individuals' deviation from distress levels predicted by maltreatment severity (relative resilience). Associations between resilience measures, sociodemographic factors, and BMI were assessed using correlations and regressions. Results Resilience measures were weakly-to-moderately correlated (0.27–0.69), though similarly patterned across sociodemographic factors. Women showed higher relative resilience, but lower perceived trait resilience than men. Only measures incorporating positive affect or resiliency perceptions were associated with BMI: individuals classified as resilient by absence of distress plus positive functioning had lower BMI than non-resilient (β = −2.10, p = 0.026), as did those with higher perceived trait resilience (β = −0.63, p = 0.046). Conclusion Relatively low congruence between resilience measures suggests studies will yield divergent findings about predictors, prevalence, and consequences of resilience. Efforts to clearly define resilience are needed to better understand resilience and inform intervention and prevention efforts.

Studies of developmental trajectories of depression are important for understanding its etiology. Existing studies have been limited by short time frames and no studies have explored a key factor: differential patterns of responding to life events. This paper introduces a novel analytic technique, growth mixture modeling with structured residuals, to examine the course of youth depression symptoms in a large, prospective cohort (N=11,641, ages 4-16.5). Age-specific critical points were identified at ages 10 and 13 where depression symptoms spiked for a minority of children. However, most depression risk was due to dynamic responses to environmental events, drawn not from a small pool of persistently depressed children, but a larger pool of children who varied across higher and lower symptom levels.

Background Socioeconomic position (SEP) is a major determinant of health across the life course. Yet, little is known about the biological mechanisms explaining this relationship. One possibility widely pursued in the scientific literature is that SEP becomes biologically embedded through epigenetic processes such as DNA methylation (DNAm), wherein the socioeconomic environment causes no alteration in the DNA sequence but modifies gene activity in ways that shape health. Methods To understand the evidence supporting a potential SEP-DNAm link, we performed a scoping review of published empirical findings on the association between SEP assessed from prenatal development to adulthood and DNAm measured across the life course, with an emphasis on exploring how the developmental timing, duration, and type of SEP exposure influenced DNAm. Results Across the 37 identified studies, we found that: (1) SEP-related DNAm signatures varied across the timing, duration, and type of SEP indicator; (2) however, longitudinal studies examining repeated SEP and DNAm measures are generally lacking; and (3) prior studies are conceptually and methodologically diverse, limiting the interpretability of findings across studies with respect to these three SEP features. Conclusions Given the complex relationship between SEP and DNAm across the lifespan, these findings underscore the importance of analyzing SEP features, including timing, duration, and type. To guide future research, we highlight additional research gaps and propose four recommendations to further unravel the relationship between SEP and DNAm.