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Objectives: The resilience of older and younger Israelis was investigated., Design and Setting: A representative sample of the Jewish population in Israel (N = 1,022) was used., Participants: The participants were three adult age-groups (18-35, 36-64, and 65+ years). Half of them were women, and they evenly represented left-wing and right-wing political attitudes., Measurements: Resilience was measured by the ratio of strength and vulnerability of the individual, the community, and the nation., Results: Older participants did not differ from younger people in sense of danger; reported lower level of distress symptoms; and showed higher individual, community, and national resilience scores based on strength to vulnerability ratio, compared with younger individuals., Conclusions: These data support the contention that older Israelis are more resilient than younger cohorts. Their long direct or indirect experience with wars and terror attacks has not decreased their resilience, and has perhaps even strengthened it., (Copyright © 2016 American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Community resilience is used to describe a community's ability to deal with crises or disruptions. The Conjoint Community Resiliency Assessment Measure (CCRAM) was developed in order to attain an integrated, multidimensional instrument for the measurement of community resiliency. The tool was developed using an inductive, exploratory, sequential mixed methods design. The objective of the present study was to portray and evaluate the CCRAM's psychometric features. A large community sample (N = 1,052) were assessed by the CCRAM tool, and the data was subjected to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. A Five factor model (21 items) was obtained, explaining 67.67 % of the variance. This scale was later reduced to 10-item brief instrument. Both scales showed good internal consistency coefficients (α = .92 and α = .85 respectively), and acceptable fit indices to the data. Seven additional items correspond to information requested by leaders, forming the CCRAM28. The CCRAM has been shown to be an acceptable practical tool for assessing community resilience. Both internal and external validity have been demonstrated, as all factors obtained in the factor analytical process, were tightly linked to previous literature on community resilience. The CCRAM facilitates the estimation of an overall community resiliency score but furthermore, it detects the strength of five important constructs of community function following disaster: Leadership, Collective Efficacy, Preparedness, Place Attachment and Social Trust. Consequently, the CCRAM can serve as an aid for community leaders to assess, monitor, and focus actions to enhance and restore community resilience for crisis situations.

Previous studies have shown that people who develop psychopathology such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following stress exposure are characterized by reduced hippocampal (HC) volume and impaired HC functional connectivity with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Nevertheless, the exact interrelationship between reduced HC volume and HC-vmPFC connectivity deficits in the context of stress has yet to be established. Furthermore, it is still not clear whether such neural abnormalities are stress induced or precursors for vulnerability. In this study, we combined measurements of MRI, functional MRI (fMRI), and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to prospectively study 33 a priori healthy Israeli soldiers both pre- and post-exposure to stress during their military service. Thus, we were able to assess the contributions of structural and functional features of the HC and its connectivity to the onset and progression of maladaptive response to stress (i.e., increased PTSD symptoms post-exposure). We found that soldiers with decreased HC volume following military service (i.e., post-exposure) displayed more PTSD-related symptoms post-exposure as well as reduced HC-vmPFC functional and structural connectivity post-exposure, compared to soldiers with increased HC volume following military service. In contrast, initial smaller HC volume pre-exposure did not have an effect on any of these factors. Our results therefore suggest that reduction in HC volume and connectivity with the vmPFC together mark a maladaptive response to stressful military service. As stress-induced HC volume reductions were previously shown to be reversible, these localized biological markers may carry valuable therapeutic potential., (Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)