Risk and Resilience Focusing on Depression and Conduct Disorder: A Comprehensive Literature Review

Child behavior problems (CBPs) are pressing social and developmental issues because of their short- and long-term effects on psychosocial development. Among CBPs, depression and conduct disorder stand out as two salient examples of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Guided by Ungar’s Systemic Model of Resilience, this comprehensive literature review explored the complex associations between sources of risk and resilience, with respect to their impact on the development of depression and conduct disorder during childhood and adolescence. We reviewed literature focused on risk and resilience factors related to depression and conduct disorder from a dynamic systems bioecological perspective focusing on individual, family, and community etiologic sources of influence as well as their impacts at different stages of development. We also examined the impact of first exposure to sources of risk and resilience at various age periods (children vs. adolescence) to better understand contextual changes in the individual’s social-emotional interpersonal networks, for example, the increasing role of peers and community levels of influence. Children with access to a wide range of resilient processes as well as resources and support are more likely to overcome and outgrow from risk and develop more adaptive behavior patterns than those who do not. However, simply lumping all resilient factors together to explain the protective and promotive factors and processes may obscure how each level of resilience factors promotes and protects certain types of risk factors. Hence, future studies should employ more rigorous and diversified methodological endeavors to examine the interactions of resilience across various domains. Furthermore, practitioners should develop a more comprehensive intervention across the individual, family, and community domains to enhance a child’s resilience to prevent and alleviate depression and conduct problems.