ABSTRACT
The risk and resilience approach has influenced social work practice literature. Recognizing that the exacerbation of social problems had made it significantly more difficult to fulfill social work's historical obligation to disadvantaged and vulnerable populations, A. Gitterman dedicated a text to risk and resilience theory in which contributors discussed "distressing life conditions and demanding societal conditions," including violence, poverty, and oppression. However, risk and resilience theory is different in several ways. First, its emphasis is on a wellness perspective, focusing on how an individual maintains positive self-regard and continues to grow and reach self-realization despite high levels of risk. Another focus central to risk and resilience theory is the power people have to recover adversity or extreme stress, a time that may threaten a person's basic assumptions about self-reliance. Person-environment relationships are not constant but reflect the timing of life events.
