Editorial : promoting resilience interventions for mental well-being in youth

Abstract

Children and adolescents face many challenges in today’s fast changing society and constantly have to overcome increasing levels of adversity in order to achieve success. Unfortunately, difficulties in copingwithemotionalandsocialdemandsduringdevelopmentcanhaveanegativeimpactontheir ability to do so. This can result in impaired school achievements and lowered self-esteem, causing depression and anxiety whose consequences may persist into adulthood. Enhancing the ability of young people to cope with adversity by training in resilience skills has been the objective of several interventions and programs in the past years. Resilience programs promote the development of protective and preventive factors, both at a personal and social level, that can help to overcome socio-emotional challenges in a positive and adaptive way. Past work has shown the importance of training resilience of youth by leveraging on relevant activities they typically perform in formal and informal learning environments. However, most research programs have focused on fostering social factors, such as family and school relationships, while fewer studies have analyzed the role of personal factors and digital health interventions in improving the resilience and coping skills of youth. More research is needed to understand the efficacy of evidence-based resilience programs in promoting mental well-being in youth, both in the short and long term. Several contributions to this Research Topic have addressed the validation of resilience fostering programs for children living in socioeconomically disadvantaged contexts or belonging to vulnerable population. From the findings in Giordano, Caravita, et al. professionals are advised to design interventions by taking into considerations the multiple interaction between social-ecological resilience and avoidant coping strategies in the children adjustment. In the work of Kara et al. empirical findings from the implementation of the Bounce Forward program in the UK to improve children health, well-being and equity in the challenging town of Blackpool are presented, showing a positive effect of the program as a school-based intervention for prevention. Fischmann et al. present an evaluation of long-term effects in two prevention programs for children-at-risk, growing up in deprived social environments, by focusing on child attachment representation as the primary outcome, as well as on self-reflective capacities of teachers taking care of these children. Fishbein et al., contribute an investigation to determine whether the positive effect of a socio-emotional learning program (PATHS) on children residing in a high poverty community were sustained over the course of two intervention years and an additional year when the intervention was no longer provided.