Trauma Resilience, Ecology of

The Ecological Perspective of Community Psychology

Relevant to recent inquiries into the nature and nurture of resilience in trauma survivors is a longstanding interest among community psychologists in the promotion of wellness, the influence of context on psychological functioning, and the empowering possibilities of ecologically informed intervention at individual, community, and societal levels. Particularly relevant to the understanding of resilience in trauma survivors is the ecological perspective guiding their work.

Briefly stated, community psychologists share with field biologists the view that organisms live (i.e., survive, thrive, or decline) in interdependence with their environments. Applying an “ecological analogy” to human behavior, community psychologists suggest that human communities, like other living environments, can be described in terms of their adaptive qualities and in the ways in which they develop, preserve, exchange, and sometime deplete resources vital to community health and well-being. Community resources include the many and diverse people who compose a community's membership and the competencies, values, beliefs, and traditions they bring to community life; the formal and informal settings that define community membership and nurture the attributes and behaviors essential to cohesive community; and the events that mark, celebrate, and sometimes challenge a community's identity relative to the larger world. One aim of ecologically informed community intervention might be to enhance the resources a community is able to offer its members; another might be to broaden the reach and improve the accessibility of these resources to include at-risk or disenfranchised segments of the larger community; and still another might be to engage community members in challenging dialogue, calling on a community to literally rethink its needs, its values, and its identity.

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