[Concepualization and promotion of resilience, well-being and mental health in children and adolescents].

Concepualization and promotion of resilience, well-being and mental health in children and adolescents Resilience, mental health and well-being are commonplace terms in Positive Psychology and Psychiatry. However, many aspects regarding their definition, assessment and promotion still remain unclear. Therefore, this review provides an overview of recent studies and suggests that resilience is best understood as allostasis, i. e. as an interactive process between individuals and environment to achieve or maintain stability in the context of present or anticipated stressors through behavioral and / or physiological changes. Consequently, the degree of resilience of an individual depends on the context, population, stressor(s), risk or protective factors and outcome. Thus, resilience is a multidimensional construct only visible when a person is experiencing adversity or traumatic events. Preliminary results suggest that interventions targeting personal (assets) and environmental (resources) protective factors in children and adolescents produce some positive effects on symptom levels when assessed directly after the intervention. Similar to the concept of resilience, no consensus on the definition or measurement of well-being has been reached so far. Given the overlap between both constructs, well-being is often regarded as an indicator or element of resilience. Future cross- and longitudinal studies are therefore needed to uncover the composition and underlying mechanisms of these constructs, to reveal how they relate to each other and to determine the potential role of developmental and cultural peculiarities.