Resilience: A Disability Studies and Community Psychology Approach

Abstract

This paper contests traditional psychological understandings of resilience through reference to a research project exploring resilience in the lives of disabled people. The paper briefly historically locates individualistic accounts of resilience (which have often been unhelpful in the lives of disabled people) and then moves into more recent social constructionist theories of this phenomenon. This latter perspective necessarily locates resilience in a network of resources including material resources, relationships, identity, bodies and minds, power and control, community participation, community cohesion and social justice. We argue that the recognition of resilience as a relational product is important and in tune with attempts to make psychology less an individualistic encounter and more a community intervention. However, disabled people, their politics and the development of critical disability studies, contest and challenge normative ideas of what it means to live with a resilient network of resources. In this sense disability offers new and exciting ways of addressing resilience.

Disability and Poverty in the Global South

“…While livelihoods are often fragmented or destroyed following the onset of an impairment, disabled people do not bow out with silent resignation, reaffirming these bodies and lives as ones imbued with resilience and resistance, defying discourse that strips them of agency and that consistently (re)casts them as spectacularly 'weak' and 'vulnerable' (see Runswick-Cole and Goodley, 2013, for more on resilience). This is a key epistemological and practical concern because it calls for the need to identify and then support these strengths.…”

The buffering role of in‐group identification and intergroup contact on the association between perceived discrimination and mental health

“…First, we examined our hypotheses among a relatively understudied minority group for whom determining resilience factors against the negative effects of PD would be critical. Previous research has often investigated structural barriers and social rights that have not been granted to disabled people (Runswick‐Cole & Goodley, ), but understudied social–psychological factors that could promote resilience among this group. At the applied level, an understanding of such resilience factors may pave the way to designing various intervention projects that are likely to alleviate the negative effects of pervasive PD in the life of disabled people.…”

“…disabled people(Runswick-Cole & Goodley, 2013), but understudied social-psychological factors that could promote resilience among this group. At the applied level, an understanding of such resilience factors may pave the way to designing various intervention projects that are likely to alleviate the negative effects of pervasive PD in the life of disabled people.…”

A grounded theory of Internet and social media use by young people who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC)

“…Exposure to risk is an important facet of developing coping strategies and the current study showed some participants had experienced challenging situations online. Runswick-Cole and Goodley [99] explored concepts of resilience from a critical disability studies perspective and proposed a 'networks of resilience model' that created interconnections between resources. The current participants reported being assertive in relation to unkind online comments, blocking people from sharing material online, reacting to an invasion of privacy by severing a social relationship, using Facebook to discuss issues privately with staff, and accessing social media despite parental wishes.…”