The latest research on bouncing back

American developmental psychologist Emmy Werner was one of the first people to ever use the term 'resilience'.  It came out of her landmark study of children from Kauai, Hawaii, from their birth in 1955 to their late teens, in the 1970s. At the time, Kauai was a relatively poor area, and many of the children had alcoholic, mentally ill and/or unemployed parents. Werner found that this only negatively impacted some children in their late teens; around a third didn't display destructive symptoms and behaviours like chronic unemployment, substance abuse, and, for girls, out-of-wedlock births. She termed this third 'resilient'.