The topic of resilience is obtaining a growing interest in psychiatric research. Resilience refers to positive adaptation or ability to maintain or regain mental health despite experiencing adversity. It is a dynamic, context- and time-specific process, and may vary across all life domains. Pathways to resilience are multiple and reciprocally interacting, and include biological, psychological, social and dispositional attributes. These factors play an important role both in psychiatric and somatic chronic disorders.

Our aim is to evaluate and compare resilience in mood disorder patients and diabetic ones. We also mean to investigate personality features, coping abilities, self-esteem and quality of life, and their possible correlation with resilience in these two populations.

Mood disorder and diabetic patients will be recruited at the Psychiatry Institute (SC Psichiatria) and Endocrinology Ward (SC Endocrinologia), respectively. Socio-demographic data will be gathered and patients will be asked to fill the following self-administered scales: Resilience Scale for Adult (RSA), Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced Inventory – Brief (Brief Cope), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), Paykel List Of Stressful Events, Temperamental and Character Inventory (TCI), Short Form 36 (SF-36).

Data collection is ongoing. We expect that the findings from this research may allow to develop strategies to support patients with chronic diseases, both as far as outcome and subjective well-being are concerned, according to the World Health Organization definition of 'mental” and 'physical” health.