Psychosocial Stress, Emotion Regulation, and Resilience in Adolescence

With this chapter, we review the definitions and conceptual challenges associated with research on psychosocial stress, emotion regulation, and resilience. The literatures on stress, resilience, and emotion regulation have partially independent traditions. Yet there are clear advantages to conceptualizing these phenomena within a unified framework. For example, the term resilience often implies that a person has acquired at least some emotion regulation skills in spite of significant adversity. More importantly, resilience and emotion regulation are both complex developmental processes that can be altered subtly or dramatically through stress exposure. There are many common themes across these three constructs. However, we find an interpersonal understanding of stress, emotion regulation, and resilience to be well suited for understanding how these three processes interact and develop across time. We outline the intersection of these three distinct literatures and their relevance to health research and treatment of adolescents.