Resilience

Know the Facts

Most youth pass through adolescence with little difficulty even though they encounter many challenges. When youth do encounter difficulties, they tend to be resilient and often times thrive, mature and grow.

Resilience is the process of managing stress and functioning well even when faced with challenges or difficulties. So, youth who are resilient have the ability to recover from or adjust to big change or traumatic events. There are many ways adults can build and protect a youth’s resiliency. This includes strengthening their Protective Factors.

Protective Factors

Protective factors are environments, supports, behaviors or characteristics that help reduce a person’s risk to develop a mental health or substance use disorder.
They can include:

• High self-esteem
• Good problem-solving skills
• Parental or familial support
• Monitoring of youth’s activities
• Regular school attendance
• Economic security
• And most importantly Feeling close to at least one adult

Project AWARE: Youth Mental Health First Aid

Learn more about how to build and protect a young person’s resilience and how to recognize and help youth experiencing mental illness by attending a local Youth Mental Health First Aid course. The course provides adults with the knowledge and skills to recognize mental illness in youth, help a youth experiencing a mental illness and respond to a mental health crisis.