Protective factor

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Protective factors are conditions or attributes (skills, strengths, resources, supports or coping strategies) in individuals, families, communities or the larger society that help people deal more effectively with stressful events and mitigate or eliminate risk in families and communities. [1] [2]

Contents

In the field of Preventive Medicine and Health Psychology, Protective Factors refer to any factor that decreases the chances of a negative health outcome occurring. Conversely, a Risk factor will increase the chances of a negative health outcome occurring. Just as statistical correlations and regressions can examine how a range of independent variables impact a dependent variable, we can examine how many Protective and Risk factors contribute to the likelihood of an illness occurring.

Adoption

Protective factors include:

Some risks that adopted children are prone to: [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

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Interracial adoption refers to the act of placing a child of one racial or ethnic group with adoptive parents of another racial or ethnic group.

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Social cognitive theory (SCT), used in psychology, education, and communication, holds that portions of an individual's knowledge acquisition can be directly related to observing others within the context of social interactions, experiences, and outside media influences. This theory was advanced by Albert Bandura as an extension of his social learning theory. The theory states that when people observe a model performing a behavior and the consequences of that behavior, they remember the sequence of events and use this information to guide subsequent behaviors. Observing a model can also prompt the viewer to engage in behavior they already learned. In other words, people do not learn new behaviors solely by trying them and either succeeding or failing, but rather, the survival of humanity is dependent upon the replication of the actions of others. Depending on whether people are rewarded or punished for their behavior and the outcome of the behavior, the observer may choose to replicate behavior modeled. Media provides models for a vast array of people in many different environmental settings.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Communities That Care</span>

Communities That Care (CTC) is a program of the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) in the office of the United States Government's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). CTC is a coalition-based prevention operating system that uses a public health approach to prevent youth problem behaviors such as violence, delinquency, school drop out and substance abuse. Using strategic consultation, training, and research-based tools, CTC is designed to help community stakeholders and decision makers understand and apply information about risk and protective factors, and programs that are proven to make a difference in promoting healthy youth development, in order to most effectively address the specific issues facing their community's youth.

Peer victimization is the experience among children of being a target of the aggressive behavior of other children, who are not siblings and not necessarily age-mates.

An important part of the heritage of family resilience is the concept of individual psychological resilience which originates from work with children focusing on what helped them become resilient in the face of adversity. Individual resilience emerged primarily in the field of developmental psychopathology as scholars sought to identify the characteristics of children that allowed them to function "OK" after adversity. Individual resilience gradually moved into understanding the processes associated with overcoming adversity, then into prevention and intervention and now focuses on examining how factors at multiple levels of the system and using interdisciplinary approaches promote resilience. Resilience also has origins to the field of positive psychology. The term resilience gradually changed definitions and meanings, from a personality trait to a dynamic process of families, individuals, and communities.

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J. David Hawkins is an American sociologist, academic, and author. He is Emeritus Endowed Professor of Prevention and founding director of the Social Development Research Group in the School of Social Work at the University of Washington. His research focuses on the prevention of behavior problems in children and adolescents. He developed the Communities That Care prevention system with Richard F. Catalano.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are identified as serious and traumatizing experiences, such as abuse, neglect, exposure to violence, substance use, and other harmful events or situations that occur within a child's household or environment. Unfortunately, exposure to ACEs within the child's community is all too common in low-income households and neighborhoods, with close to 43% of children in the United States (U.S.) living in low-income families. ACEs were first identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Kaiser Permanente's Adverse Childhood Experiences Study conducted from 1995 to 1997, where ACEs were examined and correlated with later-life well-being. With one in four children experiencing or witnessing a potentially traumatic event, children who grow up in an unsafe environment are at risk for developing adverse health outcomes, affecting brain development, immune systems, and regulatory systems.

References

  1. "A definition of protective factors by a governmental institution for children's welfare". Archived from the original on 2014-07-20. Retrieved 2012-03-08.
  2. "A web page for the prevention of suicide". Archived from the original on April 21, 2012.
  3. Simmel, C. (2007). Risk and protective factors contributing to the longitudinal psycho-social well-being of adopted foster children. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders,15(4), 237-249.
  4. Reilly, T. & Platz, L. (2004). Post-adoption service needs of families with special needs children : Use, helpfulness, and unmet needs. Journal of Social Service Research 30(4)51-67.
  5. Howe, David. (1997). Parent-reported problems in 211 adopted children : Some risk and protective factors. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38(4), 401-411.