Universitas Gadjah Mada
Faculty of Economics and Business

Entering the post-pandemic era, resilience and vulnerability became relevant discussions after almost all individuals in the world managed to struggle with all the changes that Covid-19 brought to life. An interesting topic related to this, titled as “Psychological Resilience and Vulnerability: An Introduction” was discussed in one of the lecture series as part of the virtual summer program held by the Faculty of Economics and Business Universitas Gadjah Mada (FEB UGM) on Wednesday (06/07), namely International Week (iWeek) 2022. On the day of the event, the lecture series presented an expert speaker on the topic, namely Dr. Rebecca Graber from the University of Brighton, United Kingdom.

At the beginning of his presentation, Dr. Graber explains that there are several factors that can make people more likely to experience stress or distress such as current stressful life events, grief and bereavement, limits to coping strategies, and social isolation or loneliness. Furthermore, she also explained the relevance of resilience and vulnerability to the Covid-19 pandemic era. Based on the data she got, during the Covid-19 pandemic, 36.5% of the world's people experienced stress, 50% experienced psychological stress, and 27.6% experienced sleep problems. Within an organization an individual may collectively be more resilient and more able to cope with adverse conditions.

Furthermore, Dr. Graber explains further what is meant by resilience, she defines resilience as a process of positive psychological change in light of adversity and a mixture of personality, coping skills, and relational and socio-cultural resources to sustain well-being. Resilience can also be understood as an interactive process, drawing on personal assets together with relational and contextual resources, to support improved outcomes in contexts of nonnormative adversity (Liebenberg, 2020).

At the end of her presentation, Dr. Graber mentioned several practical applications of resilience in the post-pandemic era that can be done, among others, by acknowledging that challenging circumstances will have a different impact on different people and everyone has different strengths and resources. In addition, we can also seek multi-level solutions, create opportunities for social bonding, address social and personal inequalities through available tools, and support engagement with communities.

Reportase: Kirana Lalita Pristy