Why resilience won’t solve the mental health crisis among young people

Around 20% of eight to 16 year olds in the UK had a probable mental health disorder in 2023, according to NHS statistics. This is up from 12.5% in 2017. At the same time, a 2024 report from the Children’s Commissioner for England found that more than a quarter of a million children were not able to access the mental health support they need.

Some have questioned whether we are dealing with a “genuine” mental health crisis or a different problem – a lack of resilience in children and young people. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity, and higher resilience is linked to lower rates of mental ill-health in young people.

But the evidence around exactly what role resilience plays in mental health paints a more complex picture. What we do know is there are skills and actions that children can be taught to improve their mental wellbeing. But there’s also a good argument for not ignoring other root causes of children’s health problems.

Resilience often comes up in mental health discussions as a response to possible over-pathologising – the tendency to interpret even mild signs of distress or sadness as symptoms of mental illness. This in turn could undermine young people’s resilience because they are not able to differentiate between normal variation in human emotions and mental ill-health.

While the research evidence of over-pathologising in young people is limited, it has been suggested that it might be a side-effect of increased mental health awareness education and campaigns. While such efforts reduce stigma around mental health, they may have increased the perception that disclosing issues with mental health is socially desirable.

A more balanced approach to mental health in education and society should teach young people both about symptoms of mental ill health to reduce stigma and about the normal range of emotions. This could involve noticing emotions without reacting to them – the non-judgmental awareness of emotions – and emotion labelling, since naming emotions we experience decreases their intensity. This may in turn enhance resilience.

But resilience can be misinterpreted as the need to be more “tough”. This could lead to excessive reliance on strategies such as emotion suppression – putting on a brave face – to manage emotions and this could undermine mental health.

Society and mental health

Robust research shows that social factors, particularly poverty and discrimination, lead to poor mental health. Indeed, in the 2023 NHS survey, rates of probable mental health disorders were much higher in UK children whose parents didn’t have enough funds to support their children’s out-of-school activities.

Focusing on resilience as a solution to the mental health crisis risks shifting responsibility for mental health onto those affected, rather than calling out and changing policies and systems contributing to poor mental health.

The impact of global crises, including climate change, is another example of this. The NHS survey found that over half of young people aged 17-25 reported feeling worried about the climate crisis. Claiming that children and teenagers should just be more resilient can distract from the responsibility adults face to take climate action.

Similarly, problematic social media use may undermine young people’s mental health. Social media content may celebrate the achievement of extrinsic goals, which rely on the approval of others: fame, wealth and beauty. Research has linked a focus on extrinsic goals to poor mental health.

Teenagers may be particularly vulnerable to the addiction-like effects of social media due to normal developmental changes in their brains. Clearly, the solution here needs to include more than enhancing resilience in young people. It requires action from social media companies, too.

Overlapping approaches

What’s more, mental ill-health prevention involves much more than resilience. It’s tempting to think that we have found the one approach, in this case resilience, that could shift the mental health crisis. But resilience closely overlaps with other mental health concepts and approaches. These include self-regulation – the ability to manage our thoughts, emotions and behaviour.

For example, resilience and self-regulation are often fostered by the same approaches – the development of social-emotional skills or mindfulness training. And if we look at the brain activity linked to resilience and self-regulation, we find close overlaps there too.

Instead of relying on a single concept or approach, we should focus on the key skills underpinning mental health and wellbeing shared across different approaches.

These skills include fostering emotional awareness, as well as the ability to manage rumination – repeated negative thoughts about past events – and reactivity to emotions. Building connections is important, as well as cultivating gratitude and awe.

Our wellbeing is also boosted by taking action that benefits others and finding wholesome meaning and purpose in life. All of these skills can protect mental health and wellbeing.

For effective prevention, we need to start thinking about mental health skills in the same way we are thinking about fostering maths and reading skills. Similarly, acquisition of mental health skills requires time, careful scaffolding, continuity, repetition and lots of practice.

This should be reflected in Ofsted assessments and much more comprehensive and clearer guidance on mental health curricula grounded in robust research.

Poor mental health can undermine young people’s academic outcomes and their lifelong prospects. It is time to recognise that piecemeal approaches, such as a focus on resilience, are just pieces of the puzzle. They are not the much needed transformational solutions to the mental health crisis.

Dusana Dorjee received funding for her research from the British Academy, ESRC, UKRI Innovate UK and Mind & Life Institute. She is a co-director of a community interest company providing training in mindfulness-based wellbeing courses for schools and adults.