The hardiness factor
The hardiness research was done by the International Committee for the Study of Victimization. These studies looked at people who had suffered serious adversity - cancer patients, prisoners of war, accident victims, and so forth - and survived.
They found that people fell generally into three categories:
- those who were permanently dispirited by the event,
- those who got their life back to normal, and
- those who used the experience as a defining event that made them stronger.