PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND SPORT AS A PREVENTIVE FACTOR IN BUILDING RESILIENCE

Despite at different levels, every individual experiences the stress in his/her life. It is known that various stressful situations such as daily problems and serious traumatic events affect individual’s well-being in a negative way. Ability of reacting to stress, lessening the effects of stress as well as diminishing the stress illustrates difference among individuals. Showing compliance with stress, being able to cope with stress and showing efficacy through controlling this state, in other words, the concept which expresses positive way of reacting to stress is described as resilience. The development of psychological resilience is mostly related to existence of preventive factors which are occurred through various intrinsic and extrinsic variables. Preventive factors such as social efficacy, problem solving skills, autonomy, sense of meaning in life, self-esteem, positive parental climate, social support and effective health and nursing services play as a functioning role in giving positive reactions to the stress. In addition, having interests and enjoyable activities provide support to an individual to comply with stressful situations. Sport can be thought as one of these activities. Here, it can be seen that in terms of resilience, with mentioned characteristics sport and physical activity is a preventive factor itself and it supports other preventive factors as well. In this vein, in this study, the role of sport and physical activity in building resilience presented in the light of theoretical explanations and research findings and some recommendations are provided on the basis of related literature.