Background: While resilience has been defined as resistance to illness, adaptation, and thriving, the ability to bounce back or recover from stress is closest to its original meaning. Previous resilience measures assess resources that may promote resilience rather than recovery, resistance, adaptation, or thriving. Purpose: To test a new brief resilience scale. Method: The brief resilience scale (BRS) was created to assess the ability to bounce back or recover from stress. Its psychometric characteristics were examined in four samples, including two student samples and samples with cardiac and chronic pain patients. Results: The BRS was reliable and measured as a unitary construct. It was predictably related to personal characteristics, social relations, coping, and health in all samples. It was negatively related to anxiety,
depression, negative affect, and physical symptoms when other resilience measures
and optimism, social support, and Type D personality (high negative affect and
high social inhibition) were controlled. There were large differences in BRS scores
between cardiac patients with and without Type D and women with and without
fibromyalgia. Conclusion: The BRS is a reliable means of assessing resilience as the
ability to bounce back or recover from stress and may provide unique and important
information about people coping with health-related stressors.