More on resilience

ANNE-LAURA VAN HARMELEN: An estimated half of youth growing up experiences adversity. With adversity, you can think about a car crash, a family member being ill, but also about experiences of bullying or victimisation. Young people that have experienced adversity sometimes develop problems with their mental health, like a depression. Other young people might not develop mental health problems, but they might develop problems with their behaviour. For instance, they get into arguments with their friends more easily, or maybe they don’t do their best at school anymore. Some young people develop these behavioural problems without experiencing a bad event. Others might experience less problems.

And there are even young people that are so resilient that they don’t develop these problems at all, even after having experienced a really severe negative event. Resilience is something that you can learn. It’s not something that you already have. So if you were a bit less resilient in the past, you can become more resilient in the future. In this module, we’ll explain to you what resiliency is and how you can become more resilient.