Adversity: A path to vulnerability or resiliency? Depends on how much.

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Throughout my life I’ve been lucky to be friends with a diverse array of people, who have had quite varied past experiences. There are those few friends with "charmed" lives. Healthy family, happy home, found "the one" with little difficulty. There are others who have experienced major past adversity. The loss of a parent, a debilitating rejection, chronic poverty. This variability has often made me wonder about the relationship between past experiences and whether one responds to current life adversity with with vulnerability or resiliency. If faced with a new crisis, who will display the resilient response – 1) my friend who has never experienced any adversity or 2) my friend who has experienced too much adversity. There are convincing arguments to be made for either case. My friend who never experienced adversity might have a strong social support network and a positive outlook on life, but might lack necessary skills and toughness needed to get through a traumatic event. My friend who experienced too much adversity might be stressed and depleted from their past experiences, but might have developed that toughness and those skills that my “charmed” friend lacks. So what’s the answer?

In 2010 Mark Seery, a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, along with colleagues Alison Holman and Roxane Cohen Silver tackled this question. Specifically they assessed whether past adversity is associated with 1) worse mental health and well-being outcomes overtime, and 2) how one responds to a recent adverse event.
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