The importance of resilience in adolescent mental health promotion and risk behaviour prevention
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EDITORIAL
The importance of resilience in adolescent mental health promotion and risk behaviour prevention Krzysztof Ostaszewski1 Received: 1 October 2020 / Accepted: 2 October 2020 Ó Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+) 2020
From a health point of view, adolescence is one of the best periods in life. It is a time of peak health and strength. But, on the other hand, during this period of life there is the greatest tendency to undertake risky behaviours that compromise adolescents health and well-being. This is also the time, when young people become more vulnerable for mental problems including depression, suicidal behaviours, eating disorders, substance use and other addictive behaviours. The successful or unsuccessful development of adolescents depends on the risks and protection they are exposed to. The interplay between risk and protection influences the mechanisms of resilience or vulnerability. Therefore, support should be given to research on positive factors that contribute to adolescent resilience. The theory of resilience provides a framework for understanding why some adolescents who are exposed to a number of risks do not develop negative health or social outcomes, and contrary to expectations, grow up successfully (Fergus and Zimmerman 2005). The concept of resilience includes compensatory and protective models to explain how positive factors operate to help adolescents overcome risks. Compensatory model indicates ‘‘positive factors’’ that offset the negative effect of risk factors. Whereas the protective factor model explains the ‘‘protective factors’’ that moderate the relationship between the risk factors and the negative outcomes. These two types of factors are known in the literature under two terms ‘‘protective factors’’ or ‘‘promotive factors’’ (Sameroff et al. 2003; Zimmerman et al. 2013).
This Editorial is part of the special issue Adolescent health in Central and Eastern Europe. & Krzysztof Ostaszewski [email protected] 1
The knowledge on ‘‘protective’’ or ‘‘promotive’’ factors radically changed the approaches used in adolescent mental health promotion and risk behaviours prevention. Strengthbased approaches concentrate on providing youth with the internal and external attributes needed for healthy development (Bernat and Resnick 2006). There are a few strength-based concepts that are especially valuable in the context of adolescent mental health and well-being. They include supportive school environment, parent–child effective communication, meaningful extracurricular activities. These three examples were selected because they cut across problems addressed in this volume of IJPH. Adolescents have the potential to control their development and actively influence the adaptation processes because of their exceptional plasticity (Lerner et al. 2003). This is particularly important in those cases where the development of a young person is heading in a wrong direction. We know that youth development is not a linear process and highly context-depend
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