Chilean miners provide lesson in resilience.

• Position: Psychology

While many people assume that the men rescued from the mine in Chile might suffer from psychological problems that require therapy, the miners' survival of the ordeal actually may provide a worldwide lesson on the remarkable strength of human resilience, according to Michael Poulin, assistant professor of psychology at the University at Buffalo (N.Y.).

"That doesn't mean being trapped with 32 others in a small chamber 2,296 feet beneath the earth for 69 days in 90-degree heat was easy. It was quite harrowing, mentally stressful, and, for some, it constituted a medical emergency--but the men had good reason to expect a rare happy ending"

For people around the world praying for and celebrating the miners' rescue, Poulin says the way the miners coped with the threat to their survival is instructive in understanding how people in general cope with life's difficulties.

"So many of us face stresses like illness, injury, economic crisis, loss of employment, loss of home, which, in rum, mean a loss of our sense of predictability and control and a loss of the everyday routines that give our lives meaning.

"The miners' lives also were disrupted in a terrifying and unexpected way," Poulin continues. "Yet, even in this...