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Wolfson Institute of Population Health

Q&A: Concepts of resilience in adolescent mental health research

Strengthening the resilience of adolescents is central to promoting long-term mental health outcomes, but resilience is a widely used term, often applied in different ways. In this Q&A, Professor Stefan Priebe and Dr Kimberley Anderson discuss how they conducted a systematic review to understand how the term “resilience” is understood in the adolescent mental health literature, and how they developed a framework that synthesises the core characteristics of different resilience concepts.

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Kimberly Anderson and Stefan Priebe

What is new about the study?

On March 1, 2021, Queen Mary launched the Youth Resilience Research Unit to study how young people use personal and social resources to overcome mental distress. The Unit is funded by Barts Charity. "Resilience" in young people is a buzz word used by both politicians and researchers, but in very different ways, which leads to misunderstandings and hinders research. For the first time, this paper systematically reviews all adolescent mental health literature and provides three distinct dimensions to clarify what exactly is meant by the term “resilience” and how different understandings can be categorised and compared.

Why is the study important?

Without clarity about what precisely is meant by “resilience”, both research and policies struggle to move forward, and it is difficult to synthesise literature and translate research findings into meaningful interventions that improve the mental health of young people. Referring to the framework in this review may provide a common understanding of resilience that can strengthen the coherence of research in this area (for example, by clarifying the aim of studies and measures, and facilitating comparisons of research findings) as well as help practitioners who consider resilience-focused interventions to understand and appropriately apply different approaches to help adolescents strengthen and use resilience, basing their work on a sound theoretical model.

What are the wider implications?

Adolescents frequently experience mood swings and episodes of mental distress, which can increase when facing everyday adversity as well as larger-scale challenges. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020 alone, young people reported an increase of loneliness (41%), worries (38%), sadness (37%), and stress (34%). Commonly experienced episodes of mental distress such as these can turn into life-long problems, with 75% of all mental disorders beginning in adolescence. Yet, the near-universal experience of adolescent distress does not translate into near-universal mental illness in the adult population. Therefore, to gain a better understanding of how experiences during adolescence may contribute to lifelong wellbeing, it is essential to understand how young people reduce and overcome mental distress, and how these activities or traits can be strengthened to build resilience and promote prevention of severe distress and recovery over their entire lifetime. This will be one of the core research aims of the new Youth Resilience Research Unit.

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