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300 Longwood Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
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Pressroom:
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| Sala de noticias |
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| 30 de julio de 2003 |
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Contacte:
Mary-Ellen Shay
617-355-6420
mary.shay@childrens.harvard.edu
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Researchers hope findings will spur renewed focus and possible intervention programs
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Children's Hospital Boston researchers have identified a key to resilience in low-income extremely disadvantaged children. A study published in the journal Development and Psychopathology reveals that children who regularly face a variety of significant stressors in their lives can more easily overcome them when certain external and internal resources are available. The two most important resources discovered are parental monitoring and self-regulatory skills. ''The differences between the resilient and non-resilient children in our study were very striking. Those children with the greatest parental monitoring of activities and especially those with the best self regulatory skills were the most resilient,'' according to lead author John Buckner, Ph.D., research associate in the department of psychiatry at Children's Hospital Boston.
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The study defined resilience as the lack of behavioral problems, lack of mental health symptoms and both a high level of functioning and competence in daily living. The project involved 155 children aged 8 to 17 years old living in Worcester, Mass. Fifty-three percent were girls and the ethnic/racial profile was mixed with many of the families experiencing homelessness in the past. A series of interviews were conducted with the mothers of the children to collect detailed information about their income, benefits, mental health, history of abuse, exposure to violence, and social support. In addition, the mothers were also asked about their children's background (including physical and sexual abuse, as well as exposure to violence), and their developmental history. To measure parental monitoring, the mothers were asked how often they knew where their children were and with whom they were with, when their children were away from home. The children were additionally asked about other less obvious emotional and physical strains such as hunger, cold in the winter, feeling afraid or living in an unsafe neighborhood.
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The results showed that 29 percent of the children were classified as resilient, and 45 percent as non-resilient. As expected, these two groups were distinctly different. The mental health, competence, and overall adjustment of the typical resilient youth was satisfactory and well within normal limits, while the non-resilient youths reported much higher levels of psychiatric symptoms, had more behavior problems, were less competent and functioned at a lower level than the resilient children. Both groups were very comparable in age, gender, race/ethnic status, family composition and income. However, the non-resilient group reported having more negative, uncontrollable, stressful life events in the past year. They also had more chronic strains, a higher rate of abuse, and less parental monitoring.
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Buckner and co-authors Enrico Mezzacappa, M.D., and William Beardslee, M.D., also of Children's Hospital Boston, further analyzed the data and controlled for many variables including age, gender, intelligence, severe and chronic adversity, and found that the strongest independent predictor of resilience is self-regulation. ''This is a very important finding,'' says Buckner, ''because self-regulation skills can be taught.'' These skills may be essential building blocks to effective coping and include the ability to maintain attention, plan ahead, problem solve, persevere, as well as the ability to delay gratification and control emotions. Buckner states, ''Teaching these skills is something that many parents, educators, coaches and other community leaders do already, but a heightened focus could help many children become more resilient.'' Buckner, however, adds, ''While self-regulation skills seem to be important in adapting well to a challenging environment, our study also indicates that low-income children would have better mental health if their environments were improved so that they faced far fewer adversities in their lives to begin with.''
Buckner plans to further this research by developing an intervention to help educators and parents more effectively teach self-regulation skills to their students or children as a means of providing youths with some essential tools they may need in order to succeed and be well adjusted later on in life. In the meantime he says this study's findings suggest that anyone who has an important role in a child's life can help if they simply focus more energy on teaching self-regulation skills.
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Children's Hospital Boston is home to the world's largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries have benefited both children and adults for more than 130 years. More than 500 scientists, including seven members of the National Academy of Sciences, nine members of the Institute of Medicine and nine members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute comprise Children's research community. Founded in 1869 as a 20-bed hospital for children, Children's Hospital Boston today is a 300-bed comprehensive center for pediatric and adolescent health care grounded in the values of excellence in patient care and sensitivity to the complex needs and diversity of children and families. It is also the primary pediatric teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. For more information about the hospital visit: www.childrenshospital.org.
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