Resilience refers to the fact that some individuals cope well with stressful experiences. Many factors contribute to this sort of resilience, such as the early environment, the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTPLR), the hypothalamic-pituitaryadrenal (HPA) axis, the sympathetic-adrenal medullary (SAM) axis, and emotion regulation techniques. The aim of this thesis is to investigate which factors contribute to resilience, with a particular focus on the emotion regulation technique of cognitive reappraisal. The results show that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and amygdala each play a crucial role when it comes to stress regulation. Studies have found that the PFC inhibits the amygdala response, but that the PFC is vulnerable to exposure to chronic stress. As a result, the PFC might fail to inhibit the amygdala response. Individuals who use cognitive reappraisal techniques – which has been associated particularly with frontal and parietal brain activity – seem to be less prone to this sort of problem, and, as a result, more resilient to stress.

abstract: Female infertility can present a significant challenge to quality of life. To date, few, if any investigations have explored the process by which women adapt to premature ovarian insufficiency (POI), a specific type of infertility, over time. The current investigation proposed a bi-dimensional, multi-factor, model of adjustment characterized by the identification of six latent factors representing personal attributes (resilience resources and vulnerability), coping (adaptive and maladaptive) and outcomes (distress and wellbeing). Measures were collected over the period of one year; personal attributes were assessed at Time 1, coping at Time 2 and outcomes at Time 3. It was hypothesized that coping factors would mediate associations between personal attributes and outcomes. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), simple regressions and single mediator models were utilized to test study hypotheses. Overall, with the exception of coping, the factor structure was consistent with predictions. Two empirically derived coping factors, and a single standalone strategy, avoidance, emerged. The first factor, labeled "approach coping" was comprised of strategies directly addressing the experience of infertility. The second was comprised of strategies indicative of "letting go /moving on." Only avoidance significantly mediated the association between vulnerability and distress. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Psychology 2011

The capability of organizations to respond to unexpected events has been investigated from different theoretical angles: organizational learning, improvisation, ambidexterity, resilience, to name but a few. These concepts, however, hardly ever refer to structural characteristics. Against this backdrop, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, based on systems and organizational learning theory, it will theoretically link the characteristics of organizational structure with organizational responses to unexpected external jolts, thus contributing to better understand the reactions of organizations to the unexpected. Second, it will empirically illustrate the relation of organizational structure with organizational responses by investigating how Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in Austria reacted to the unexpected inflow of refugees from Central Europe. In 2015, CSOs accepted a wide range of responsibilities and worked together with government entities to provide shelter, catering, and transport for almost one million refugees. Based on participant observations during opera- tion, in-depth interviews (2015 and 2016) and focus groups with decision-makers (2017), we will sketch three longi- tudinal case studies of organizations with very different structures, concentrating on the processes and operations they developed during the crisis. Our findings show that their responses are closely related to their structure, specifically to the flexibility and the stability of structural elements. Remarkable changes took place in all organizations investigated. Initial responses and first structural changes occurred mainly where the structure already allowed for flexibility. Yet in the long run, the adaptations also impacted the stable structural elements.

Face à la menace récurrente de crues que subit régulièrement la ville de Niamey, cette étude s’intéresse à la manière dont les autorités de la ville et les populations font face aux phénomènes d’inondation. En s’appuyant sur le cas de l’inondation de 2012, elle vise à comprendre les logiques de chacun de ces acteurs dans les stratégies mises en œuvre au moment et à la suite de l’événement. Combinant les approches qualitative et quantitative, l’étude a ainsi permis de mettre en évidence les antagonismes entre les stratégies collectives mises en œuvre par les autorités locales et les logiques individuelles pour faire face aux événements.A l’échelle collective, face à la violence de la crue de 2012 et aux dysfonctionnements observés en terme d’alerte et d’évacuation des populations, les mesures de protection active par le renforcement des digues ont été complétées par une proposition de déplacement des populations les plus exposées. Cette dernière a eu des résultats mitigés puisque beaucoup de ces populations sont revenues s’installer en zones inondables.A l’échelle individuelle, on relève certains facteurs pouvant retarder l’évacuation préventive au moment de l’événement : une difficulté à évaluer la gravité de la situation et l’attente d’une amélioration, la crainte de perdre ses biens matériels et, chez certains, la mise en place de protections de fortune pour ralentir l’entrée d’eau dans leur maison. L’étude relate également que les populations déplacées après l’événement de 2012 se sont retrouvées quelques temps après leur relocalisation dans des conditions de vie difficiles suite à une perte d’emploi et à un accès difficile à l’eau, au transport et au logement. Ces conditions ont révélé de nouvelles vulnérabilités et influencé le retour d’une majorité d’entre elles en zone inondable. Revenues vivre en zone à risque, on constate que certaines personnes ont mis en place des stratégies pour accroître leur capacité à faire face aux phénomènes d’inondation. Cependant cette forme de résilience individuelle reste limitée à un petit nombre d’individus relevant de catégories sociales particulières. / The recurring threat of risings which the town of Niamey undergoes regularly, this study is interested in the way in which the authorities and the populations cope with the phenomena of flood. Based on the case of the 2012 flood, it aims to understand the logic of each of these actors in the strategies implemented at the time and following the event. Combining the qualitative and quantitative approaches, the study has made it possible to highlight the antagonisms between the collective strategies implemented by the local authorities and the individual logics to cope with the events.At the collective level, in the violence of the flood of 2012 and the malfunctions observed in terms of warning and evacuation of populations, the active protection have been supplemented by a proposal to relocate most exposed populations. The latter has had mixed results since many of these populations have returned to settle in the flood zones.At the individual level, there are some factors that may delay preventive evacuation at the time of the event: a difficulty in assessing the seriousness of the situation and the expectation of improvement, the fear of losing one’s material assets and, for some, the setting up of fortune protections to slow down the entry of water into their homes. She pointed out that the affected populations found themselves some time after their relocation, in difficult living conditions as a result of job loss and difficult access to water, transport and housing. These conditions have revealed new vulnerabilities and influenced the return of some of them to flooded zone. Having returned to live in flood areas, some people have put in place strategies to increase their ability to cope with flooding. However, this form of individual resilience remains limited to a small number of individuals belonging to particular social categories.

Accelerated sea-level rise and increased intensity of tropical storm events have challenged the conventional approaches to conservation and restoration of coastal ecosystems. In coastal communities, where survival will depend largely on the ability of species to adapt to rapidly shifting conditions or become established farther inland, historic assemblages may be lost. Seed banks may be an important component of resilience and recovery in response to altered inundation regimes, should they contain species able to adapt or migrate inland. This study assess the ability of seed banks to act as ecological buffers to storm surge disturbances and to instill ecological resilience in degraded and vulnerable coastal ecosystems. Above-ground, seed bank and propagule assemblages were surveyed from historic communities at the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. Artificial storm surge experiments revealed that that seed banks were not well distributed throughout the coastal transition communities and that seed bank responses following storm surges are likely to vary among the different plant communities. While some relict species are expected to respond following disturbances, ruderal species are especially dominant in the upland seed bank communities and may, at least in the short term, cause shifts away from the historical assemblages. The apparent absence of seaward species in the upland seed banks may make assisted migration an important tool for the survival of communities unable to keep pace. Community response following translocation of propagule bank application onto highly degraded buyout properties suggested that this technique may be an effective tool in introducing resilience into ecosystems already experiencing the effects of climate change. They resulted in the establishment of diverse and variable communities, containing indicator species from a number of historic communities with varying environmental tolerances. Long-term monitoring of community change and reproductive output of target species may indicate the utility of community translocation in creating resilient and future-adapted communities.

Social support and resilience have been shown to reduce recovery times after major operations, as well as predict levels of post-operative pain. This study aims to determine whether social support and resilience modulate medical outcomes parameters and perceptions of recovery after a surgical intervention. Post-operative patients were recruited from an inner-city, safety net, level 1 trauma center prior to discharge. They completed questionnaires on social support (Medical Outcomes Study - Social Support Survey MOS-SSS), resilience (Brief Resilience Scale BRS), and overall health (Medical Outcomes Study – Short Form 36 MOS-SF36). Patients then completed the MOS-SF36 questionnaire approximately six and twelve weeks after surgical treatment. Preliminary results from recruited patients offer no conclusion regarding social support and outcome measures, but a significant positive relationship between resilience and patient-reported quality of life was seen (Spearman's Rho = 0.606). Resilience was also highest among patients in the surgical oncology service, relative to the other two surgical cohorts.

Lors de crises en entreprise, certaines ressources aux caractéristiques particulières émergent pour aider autrui, dans la souffrance. Nous appelons ces ressources : les toxic handlers. Le rôle de cette recherche est de comprendre ce que font les « toxic handlers », pourquoi ils aident autrui dans la souffrance, comment ils le font, comment les organisations peuvent les aider. Les « toxic handlers » sauvent les entreprises par acte de compassion mais payent malheureusement un lourd prix pour cela. Nous avons tenté de répondre au processus de création de la résilience de compassion en entreprise. De quelle manière des individus qui ne laisse rien paraître de particulier au regard de leur entreprise se trouve subitement pris de compassion pour leurs collègues. Nous nous posons la question de ce qui se passe chez le toxic handler, est-il « un porteur de compassion ou de souffrance » ? Comment cette compassion/souffrance va naître chez le « toxic handler » ? Pourquoi les « employés en souffrance » ne parviennent pas à affronter les « émotions toxiques » ? Comment se crée la relation qui va s’effectuer entre le « toxic handler » et « l’employé en souffrance » ? Les toxic handlers sont intermédiaires entre les « toxic boss » et « les employés en souffrance ». Mais les toxic handlers ne peuvent agir seulement et seulement si, il y a crise en entreprise (crise interne) et que le toxic handler soit aussi en crise (nous parlons de double crise). Nous avons réalisé un modèle d’analyse du processus de résilience de compassion et nous l’avons appliqué sur plusieurs entreprises de grandes tailles, subissant des crises. Nos travaux ouvrent un champ de recherches et amènent de nombreuses perspectives au regard de la problématique du processus de résilience de compassion en entreprise. / When a crisis occurs within a company, certain resources with particular characteristics emerge, helping those who suffer. We call these resources: “toxic handlers.”The role of this research is to understand what it is that “toxic handlers” do, why they help others in difficult. How do they do this? What can organizations do to help them? “Toxic handlers” rescue companies through an act compassion, but unfortunately they pay a heavy price for this. We have attempted to answer certain questions surrounding the creation process of compassionate resilience within companies. How do individuals, who don’t appear to be suffering in the eyes of their companies, find themselves full of compassion for their close colleagues? We’re asking ourselves what happens to a toxic handler. Is he or she a “carrier of compassion or of suffering”? How does this compassion or suffering come about with regard to the “toxic handler”? Why can’t employees who suffer manage to front up to toxic emotions? How is the relation between the “toxic handler” and the “employees in pain” created? Toxic handlers act as intermediaries between “toxic boss” and “employees in pain.” The actions of “toxic handlers” are nonexistent within a company unless there is an internal crisis and only if the “toxic handler” is also facing a crisis (what we call a double crisis). We have created an analysis model for compassionate resilience and have applied it to several large companies suffering from a crisis. Our work opens a field of research and brings together numerous perspectives concerning the problematic of compassionate resilience within a company.

The concept of resilience is increasingly applied to policy-making. However, despite its widespread use, resilience remains poorly defined, open to multiple interpretations, and challenging to translate into practical policy instruments. Three particularly problematic aspects of resilience concern its rigid conceptualisation of adaptation and learning, its de-politicised interpretation of participatory decision-making, and the ill-defined role and relevance of social vulnerability indicators. My research analyses these three aspects within the context of flood risk management in the UK, which is uniquely suited to studying the practicability of a cross-disciplinary concept like resilience, because it connects issues of natural resource management, social planning, and disaster management. First, I analyse two case studies of experimental pilot projects in natural flood management. Through studying project reports, and interviewing stakeholders involved in project implementation, I determine whether the theorised learning-by-doing method in resilience is reflected in experiences from real experimental projects. Secondly, I use one of these case studies to map out the political structure of local participatory bodies in flood management, and also conduct a small survey of local community groups. The purpose of this second study is to determine if collaborative methods can indeed lead to a knowledge-driven policy process as envisioned in resilience literature. Lastly, I use statistical analysis to compare a traditional flood management model and a socio-economic model. The aim of the statistical modelling is to determine whether socio-economic factors are indeed useful for informing flooding policy, and whether they offer new insights not already being used in modern flood management. I find that resilience gives insufficient consideration to the importance of political constraints and economic trade-offs in policy-making, and that evidence for the usefulness of socio-economic factors is inconclusive. Future work could focus on further refining the statistical modelling to pinpoint empirically verifiable indicators of resilience.

This thesis presents research undertaken to understand and enhance resilience in the UK Food and Drink Manufacturing Sector. It focuses on the development of a conceptual framework which establishes how specific vulnerabilities link to individual mitigation strategies available to the sector and the impact of such strategies on wider sustainability. The research in this thesis is divided into four main parts. The first part consists of three complementary review chapters exploring resilience as a theoretical concept, resilience in the UK Food and Drink Manufacturing sector and existing methods used to study and/or enhance resilience. The second part of the thesis begins by describing how the pragmatic philosophy and abductive stance underpinning the research, in combination with review findings, helped to determine the research techniques used in this work, which included the systematic review process and the mixed methods case study. Next, the research facilitating a novel conceptual framework describing how real-time vulnerabilities can be identified and mitigated in a way that is complimentary to the wider sustainability of the organisation is discussed. The third part of the thesis describes the practical set of tools, presented in the form of a workbook, which enable a Food and Drink Manufacturer to utilise the conceptual framework teachings to enhance their own resilience. The final section details key conclusions regarding the conceptual nature and practical enhancement of resilience for Food and Drink Manufacturers and the wider food system, as well as opportunities for future work. The conceptual integrity and practical usefulness of the conceptual framework and its derivative workbook toolset have been demonstrated through case studies with two UK Food and Drink Manufacturers. Results suggest two major benefits of the framework are the ability to identify an organisation's vulnerabilities based on actual mapping of their supply network and the ability to evaluate mitigating resilience strategies based on their broader impacts elsewhere within the organisation. In summary, the research reported in this thesis has concluded that resilience cannot be seen as a one-off solution for returning to how things were before disruption, but instead is a constant process of learning and adaptation in response to a company's ever-changing operating environments. The framework and workbook presented provide a novel and practical method for UK Food and Drink Manufacturers, of all sizes and production ranges, to identify and respond to their evolving vulnerabilities, as well as providing much needed synthesis and directions for future work at an academic level.

Internalizing problems are prevalent in childhood and adolescence in both community and out-of-home populations. Internalizing symptoms are frequently associated with problems in other areas of functioning as well. For children in out-of-home care, who face additional adversities such as maltreatment and witnessing traumatic events, internalizing problems have shown increased prevalence while less frequently addressed in research. The current studies used longitudinal data collected across 7 years from a sample of 1,765 children, 5 to 14 years old, in out-of-home care in Maryland, USA. Data consisted mainly of Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) assessments, as well as demographic information (age, sex, and race/ethnicity) and out-of-home placement type. In Study 1 we examined the trajectories of anxiety and depression across age and time in care separately and evaluated a comprehensive model of resilience for each outcome using hierarchical linear modeling. This exploratory model included both indicators of internal resilience (i.e. cognitive, emotional, spiritual, physical, behavioural) and environmental risk and resilience factors (i.e. family, acculturation, community, placement, school functioning, social functioning) related to internalizing problems in children and adolescents. Results showed anxiety was fairly stable over time in care and age, with few significant predictors aside from already well-known risk factors. Depression results showed a slight increase across age and decrease across time in care with several more significant predictors than the anxiety model. While both models showed overlap in predictors, they also included predictors unique to each outcome. In Study 2 we examined the reciprocal relationships across time between anxiety, depression, and significant risk and protective factors from Study 1. Using time lagged hierarchical linear models we found few significant relationships related to anxiety, and largely unidirectional relationships between depression and relevant factors over time. Two factors, traumatic stress and placement in residential treatment care, displayed reciprocal relationships with depression over time. However, our results largely did not support the direct resilience feedback mechanisms proposed between variables for either outcome, but revealed other possible mechanisms at work (i.e. dual cascades developmental model) to explain maladaptation towards depression in particular, but also anxiety. Findings are discussed in terms of theoretical implications, future research directions, and applied implications for prevention/intervention programs for internalizing problems for children in out-of-home care.