NPR

How Do Refugee Teens Build Resilience?

We often think of resilience as something that comes from within. Syrian youngsters have a different perspective.
Syrian refugees at the Zaatari refugee camp on the Jordanian border on 31 May 2017.

What does it mean to be resilient — to be able to face trauma and get through it?

You're resilient if you're like a stick of bamboo — able to bend with the winds rather than break in half. That's how psychologists like to explain it.

But in different cultures, the source of that strength can be very different. That's the finding in a published in the journal . The researchers interviewed Syrian tweens and teens who had been displaced because of war.

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