Building resilience: Key to protecting adolescent mental health

Abstract

Building resilience: Key to protecting adolescent mental health Essi Viding, Pasco Fearon, Tom Wu, Alexander Lloyd, Laura Lucas, Roslyn Law, and Jaime Smith discuss new approaches to preventing adolescent mental health problems from emerging. Adolescence is a period of heightened vulnerability to developing mental health problems. Rates of mental health disorder among adolescents have increased in the last decade(1). In light of the vast associated interpersonal and economic costs(2,3) , it is striking how few resources have been invested in advancing our understanding of how to effectively prevent mental health problems developing before they become entrenched, particularly in adolescents who are at high risk.