The use of emotional well-being as a marker of functionality is a particularly perplexing issue. It
is tempting to define adolescent resilience solely in terms of maintenance of emotional well-being
in the face of adversity. However, it may be unrealistic to believe that young people can quickly
resolve the emotional ramification of serious threat to personal values (e.g. illness, death of a
loved one). Distressing emotion must in some way act as an index of adversity. Consistent with
this idea, considerable data exist suggesting that young people functioning well under high stress
often show higher levels of emotional distress compared to their low stress peers (Luthar, 1991,
1993; Luthar, Doernberger, & Zigler, 1993).