Crisis intervention and fostering resiliency.

Current estimates are that most people living in the United States will experience at least one violent or life-threatening event during their lives. Recent data suggest, however that most people exposed to traumatic events do not experience serious disruptions in normal life functioning, and are in fact resilient. The purpose of this article is to review the constructs of resilience and recovery, and to suggest how early crisis intervention, historically linked with the mitigation or prevention of psychological distress, may more accurately be conceptualized in terms of fostering or enhancing resiliency.