As laid out in the preceding chapters, some teenagers respond to the identity crises triggered by feelings of not fitting in socially at school in ways that are protective in the short term but harmful to long-term mental health and socioeconomic attainment, and other teenagers respond in ways that promote their future prospects. The differences between these two scenarios tap into the concept of resilience. Resilience refers to the phenomenon of overcoming the odds – the success stories in a segment of society characterized by bad odds of success.

To be more specific, resilience is derived from epidemiology and represents a specific combination of risk, protection, and outcome. A risk factor characterizes a population with an elevated probability of a problematic outcome. A resilient individual, then, is a member of that at-risk population who avoids that negative outcome or, alternatively, achieves a positive outcome. A protective factor is something about the person, her or his life or social world, that reduces or breaks that link between the risk and the negative outcome. In other words, a protective factor is what helps someone be resilient in the face of risk. In epidemiology, the negative outcome might be cancer. In this scenario, an at-risk population would be smokers, and the protective factor might be some genetic trait that helps a smoker's body somehow resist the carcinogens contained in cigarettes (Jessor, Van Den Bos, Vanderryn, Costa, & Turbin, 1995; Garmezy, 1985).