The monograph Health and Resilience is a collection of papers providing the reader with an opportunity to look at the issue of mental health and resilience from various perspectives. It examines numerous concepts of resilience as related to patterns of adaptation in adverse contexts. Resilience accordingly can be conceived as good adaptation, effective coping or well-being attained despite of adversities. As referring to a class of complex phenomena, resilience is not only a basic category for developmental psychopathology and positive psychology, but also applies to developmental, educational, family and health psychology as well as to psychoneuroimmunology. The chapters of the book address the issue of resilience from either the nomothetic or the idiographic perspective. The monograph discusses theoretical models of resilience, investigates mechanisms and processes connected with health and resilience, scrutinizes various aspects of the latter (such as risk and protective factors or internal and external resources) and provides examples of support in difficult life circumstances.

"The monograph Health and Resilience addresses a very important and still neglected in Poland, issue of the relationship between psychological resilience and health. This issue is the subject of interest to a variety of scientific disciplines, including psychology. The very concept of resilience, however, is still variously understood and there is no common position in this regard. It is also in the context of this fact that the present monograph seems to be important. The monograph consists of three parts including 12 chapters written by various authors, both Polish and foreign. Part one - Social and methodological contexts of resilience (5 chapters), is an introduction to further considerations directed at the explanation of the conceptual clarification and the presentation of the monograph's main ideas, including the controversies associated. The second part of the monograph (3 chapters) - Resilience in development, investigates the phenomenon of resilience from the perspective of human development. The third part of the monograph titled Resilience and disease (4 chapters) is focused on the relationship between resilience on the one side and health and disease on the other. The monograph's chapters have written in the knowledgeable and interesting way. They certainly enrich Polish literature by bringing new information with regard to the relationship between health and human resilience. Health and resilience may be directed at a wide audience interested in health-related issues, primarily at psychologists, both researchers and practitioners. It can also provide a valuable source of information for pedagogues, sociologists, philosophers, physicians, and other medical professions' representatives."

Nina Ogińska-Bulik