Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Resilience

2017; Wiley; Volume: 54; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/jpc.13836

1440-1754

David Isaacs,

Child Abuse and Trauma

Do not wait to strike until the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking. Recently, I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend the New Zealand Paediatric Society meeting in Christchurch. Fortunate to be with the wonderful New Zealand paediatricians, fortunate to see Christchurch rising like a phoenix at last after the earthquake and doubly fortunate to hear Lucy Hone speak. Lucy is a Christchurch legend. She has always been intrigued by resilience: Why do some people confronted with adversity fall in a heap while others cope? Lucy decided to study the topic in depth, at the acknowledged centre of excellence, the University of Pennsylvania, where she completed a master's degree and a PhD on well-being and resilience. Her training put her in a strong position in 2011 to help Christchurch locals cope with the trauma wreaked by the devastating earthquake that destroyed the town, killing 185 people, and injuring thousands physically, and even more mentally. Constant aftershocks tested everyone's courage and resilience to the limit. As her builder husband Trevor helped rebuild Christchurch's mangled buildings, Lucy taught resilience in schools to children and staff. Until, in a tangled twist of fate, their own resilience was put to a test imaginable only in our worst nightmares. In 2014, a driver failed to stop at a stop sign and ploughed into a car, killing the Hones' beloved daughter, 12-year-old Abi, her best friend Ella and Ella's mother Sally, who was a close friend of Lucy. Lucy gave us a definition of resilience as coping with adversity and learning from it, and said research teaches us resilience can be learned. All it requires is what Anne Masten2 calls 'ordinary magic': Resilience is the ordinary human adaptive response to tragedy, not extraordinary. It is lack of resilience which is abnormal.2 People also need time to heal, preferably with the help of trusted friends or family. Some may need professional help such as cognitive behavioural therapy, psychotherapy or family therapy.3 Rapid debriefing after a traumatic event, which some used to advocate, has been shown to make things worse.3 Lucy Hone is one of life's optimists and recognises that not everyone is blessed with optimism. 'Some people are born grateful, the rest of us need to practice', she said. How? Lucy quoted Martin Seligman's Three Good Things exercise: People who, each day for at least a week, wrote down three good things that happened that day, reported being happier and less depressed.4 Lucy also talked about the human need to hope, and the recognition that even people who have experienced the most devastating loss or face the imminent loss of their dying child may still be able to respond positively to the question: 'What are you hoping for now?'5 Parents like Lucy and Trevor can hope their family support each other and heal. The parents of a dying child may hope for the best possible death.6 A major conclusion from research is that a child's ability to cope with trauma depends on how their parents are coping. A local Christchurch paediatrician told me that when there were tremors during school time, her own child told her that some children cried inconsolably and others were calm, and that when parents arrived to pick their children up, only the mothers of the crying children were crying too. One way we can help children is by helping their parents cope better. Crippled old man in Bidi Bidi refugee settlement, Uganda, crushes stones and sells them to make a penny for his wife and children to buy food. Photograph by Tibaweswa Stuart (https://commons.wikime4dia.org/w/index.php?curid=63899389). Lucy Hone and our misquoted colleague have both read and approved this document. Lucy gave permission for me to report her work. Our colleague gave permission to describe the media interview and its aftermath. I thank Phil Britton, Steve Isaacs, Ken Nunn and Mike South for their helpful comments.