A quick round-up of 5 stats about adversity that may make you think twice. In a nutshell: challenges aren't always bad!
Sources:
Across a respondent population of ~130k, 76% had experienced at least one trauma or adversity in their lifetime.
The European Journal of Personality
Research on the consequences of adversity appears inconclusive. Adversity can be detrimental to mental health, promoting maladaptive patterns of thought. At the same time, posttraumatic growth studies suggest that overcoming major adversity facilitates growth in wisdom-related patterns ofthoughts.
The Stress & Resilience Institute
Mark Seery and his colleagues studied a group of more than 2,300 people by asking them to report their lifetime exposure to a list of negative events grouped into seven categories. What they discovered is that people who experienced a moderate level of adversity reported better mental health and well-being and higher life satisfaction over time compared to both those groups who reported a high history of adversity and those with no history of adversity.
Whatever does not kill us: cumulative lifetime adversity, vulnerability, and resilience
Exposure to adverse life events typically predicts subsequent negative effects on mental health and well-being, such that more adversity predicts worse outcomes. However, adverse experiences may also foster subsequent resilience, with resulting advantages for mental health and well-being. In a multiyear longitudinal study of a national sample, people with a history of some lifetime adversity reported better mental health and well-being outcomes than not only people with a high history of adversity but also than people with no history of adversity.
American Psychological Association
Some studies suggest human resilience in the face of adversity is fairly common. To support this, one study reported that even though 50 to 60 percent of the U.S. population is exposed to traumatic events, only 5 to 10 percent of those people develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
