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The notions of resilience and protection have become very popular in the psychiatric and psychosocial literature. When dealing with mental-health problems, these terms refer on the one hand to individual and group strengths, and on the other, to external factors which enable these people to cope with adversity. Beyond this generalization, it remains very difficult to distinguish between the concepts of resilience and protection.
For Werner (1989), the concept of resilience lies in contrast to that of vulnerability, which characterizes individual sensibility, whereas risk/protection factors belong more to the external domain and deal mainly with the family, the community and the environment. This distinction which Werner makes prevails in the literature: it opposes the individual and his/her environment and by doing so is akin to the prevailing Western concepts of how the world and society are structured. Two basic concepts underlie this notion: on the one hand, the concept of risk and exposure, and on the other, the concept of ability, of how the individual copes with this risk (Luthar & Zigler, 1991). However, the apparent simplicity of this framework is thrown back into question when we look at the factors which, according to these same authors, contribute to resilience. It is not only genetic factors and character which are implied here, but also the affective ties with significant adults, the type of education received, the role within the family and the feeling of coherence arising from a sound value system (Werner, 1989). It is, of course, possible to argue that individuals interiorized these factors when they were children and that they are now part of each person's character.