Wall Street Journal: Study finds adversity does make us stronger

An article in the Wall Street Journal reports on research conducted by Mark Seery, assistant professor of psychology, that showed that people who had experienced a few adverse events in their lives reported better mental health and well being than people with a history of frequent adversity and people with no history of misfortune. "So much of the existing literature shows that having experience with a negative life event is bad, with negative effects on mental and physical health," he said. "But we've found that that is not the whole story, and that people are more resilient in general than we may think." An article on his research also appeared in the Allentown Morning Call's Lehigh Valley Health blog.