Resilience in Later Life: Responding to Criticisms and Applying New Knowledge to the Experience of Dementia

The 21st Century has seen the concept of resilience as applied to later life becoming increasingly well-established in research, policy and practice. Proponents of the concept argue resilience research challenges stereotypes of ageing, an important consideration in societies faced by ageism and discrimination. It has shown how some older people are able to ‘beat the odds’, providing insights into adjustment processes that might be generalizable to others experiencing difficulties. Counter to this, however, are criticisms of resilience; that is difficult to define and measure and so impossible to be accurately targeted by services. A further criticism relates to some of the interpretations (and misinterpretations) of resilience by governments and services. Public health policies increasingly place the responsibility for health on the individual, as if we can somehow build superhuman people that will withstand all manner of difficulties. In this article I provide a general overview of some of these challenges we face as researchers and suggest some tentative solutions, albeit these are still open for debate.