Exposure-Blind Resilience: A Scoping Review of Resilience, Recovery, and Adaptation in Israel After October 7
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Study design: Systematic Review
Abstract: After the October 7, 2023, attack and the prolonged war that followed, research on resilience, recovery, and adaptation in Israel expanded rapidly. We conducted a prospectively registered scoping review of 147 peer-reviewed quantitative publications drawn from 125 independent samples to examine how resilience and adaptation were conceptualized, which resources were associated with favorable outcomes, and what evidence supported protective mechanisms. No publication operationalized resilience relative to the adversity participants experienced. Instead, resilience was predominantly measured as a self-reported capacity, and adaptation was most often inferred from low symptom levels rather than preserved functioning or broader positive adjustment. Personal resilience and individual psychological resources showed comparatively strong associations with favorable outcomes. However, the reliance on self-report resilience measures limits the interpretation of these associations as effects of distinct resources. Belonging showed a more consistently favorable pattern in a smaller literature, whereas findings for social support, family resources, and collective resources were less consistent. Formal tests of adversity-buffering effects were uncommon, predominantly cross-sectional, and indicated context-specific rather than general protection; prospective evidence regarding mechanisms was similarly sparse. No randomized trial tested a resilience-promoting intervention against a non-active comparator. The literature, therefore, identifies numerous correlates of favorable outcomes but provides substantially less evidence about when these resources constitute resilience or alter adaptation in the face of adversity. Future research should prioritize exposure-sensitive definitions, multidimensional outcomes, longitudinal designs, and temporally ordered tests of mechanisms.
Source: PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints)
Language: English
Topic: Resilience and Mental Health
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7213514034