Contemporary reports of individuals experiencing severe adversity have led to renewed debate regarding the processes that mediate a person's ability to withstand extremes of both psychological and physical abuse. The capacity to recover from extremes of trauma and stress is termed resilience. This important concept is of key relevance to health professionals as resilience and also defines a more general concept of responding to challenges that affect the individual in terms of their health behaviour. The evidence base in this area is noteworthy in that much research is based on historical case studies that, although rich in both content and appeal, also fall short of contemporary rigour in terms of validity. This review will describe the evidence for the salience of the concept of the resilience to health and mental health and the implications of the domain to the healthcare professional.