Resilience has attracted much attention, not least since the pandemic. It is characterised by a person’s ability to bounce back from adversity. Although there is no exact definition of what adversity means, it assumes that the individual is aware of the event. Here, we would like to challenge this preconception by putting forward a case of an individual who shows remarkable resilience without being aware of his disadvantages.

We present a case of a fully-functioning middle-aged man with corpus callosum agenesis of which he has been unaware. We sought to demonstrate that personality traits which have been associated with resilience may not necessarily be characteristic of a resilient individual.

T.C. is a 44-year-old individual who enrolled as a healthy participant in a research study at the University of Cambridge, which involved cognitive and personality assessments and a structural brain scan.

T.C.’s psychological profile portrayed a well-balanced man who had attained a high level of education, stable employment, a healthy personal life and good community integration. T.C.’s cognitive performance fell well within normal ranges, but was superior in terms of self-control, as measured by the stop-signal task. To our surprise, he scored below-average on questionnaires of resilience and sense of coherence beliefs and reported subclinical tendencies of obsessive-compulsive behaviours.

Resilience does not require awareness of adversity. Our case report shows that resilience may present itself fairly normally and may go unrecognised in daily life. Hardship should not be limited to traumatic events but also include brain abnormality.

No significant relationships.

Corpus callosum agenesis (CCA) is a rare congenital disorder in which there is a partial or complete absence of the corpus callosum. Within the framework of an anatomoclinical approach to schizophrenia, a few studies have focused on its association with neurological disorders, including CCA.

In this perspective, we report a rare case of an adolescent with intellectual disability, with whose complete CCA was revealed by a recent-onset schizophrenia.

A case report and literature review.

The teenager M.A. is from a first degree consanguineous marriage. He had no family history, no special habits and no history of seizures. Since early childhood, he had had a psychomotor acquisition delay and relationship difficulties that tended to worsen later. At school, he was teased by his peers and failed 4 times in different rows. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school. Verbal and physical aggressiveness, soliloquy, unmotivated laughter and vague ideas of persecution suddenly appeared, hence his psychiatric consultation one month later. Neuropsychological tests indicated current low Intelligence Quotient (60). Brain imaging revealed complete ACC (see Figure 1). He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and put on antipsychotic treatment at adequate doses and durations, with poor therapeutic response.

Our observation provides additional support for neurodevelopmental models of schizophrenia, and confirms literature data indicating that severe structural brain abnormalities would lead to early onset psychotic symptoms which are often refractory to pharmacological treatments