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Analysis: Part of the excitement of youth is that it is a time to experience new opportunities, learn new skills, rise to challenges and develop our identities.
But in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2024 the real world isn’t quite so accommodating for too many. A large and growing cohort of young Kiwis are facing mental health challenges that limit their ability to enjoy life as they should.
The facts are stark: between 2012 and 2019 the proportion of secondary school students reporting symptoms of depression nearly doubled from 13 percent to 23 percent, and reports of low mood, self-harm and suicide attempts also increased.
In 2022 and 2023, a fifth of 15 to 24-year-olds experienced high or very high levels of psychological distress. More of our adolescents die through suicide than from any other cause, and New Zealand’s youth suicide rate is one of the highest in the developed world.
These statistics are simply not acceptable. Clearly, there is an urgent need to address New Zealand’s already poor and worsening youth mental health.
Previous work at Koi Tū has identified numerous underlying interacting factors such as being exposed to stress while in utero, adverse childhood experiences, complex family situations, peer expectations and social relationships, and discrimination.
The rapidly changing world in which young people are being raised is already challenging enough, and it is difficult to anticipate what new ones our children will face as they grow up. That makes it imperative that young Kiwis are equipped to not only cope with the tough circumstances they will inevitably encounter, but also positively adapt to them.
That is, they need to build resilience, and need to be supported to do so.
A child’s resilience is determined by the balance between their exposure to negative versus positive experiences. Knock-backs, criticism, adversities are part of the twist and turns of life, but a child can still develop the resilience required to take them in their stride, as long as they have enough positive, protective experiences that outweigh the negative ones.
How can parents and caregivers help provide these positive experiences? We know that establishing stable and supportive relationships with their child from the earliest stages of life is crucial for a child’s executive functioning skills, including self-regulation of emotions and behaviours and problem-solving through difficult situations. These skills in turn serve as a solid foundation for developing resilience.
Parents and caregivers can do this by interacting with their child in specific ways from as early as infancy. Serve-and-return interactions are a great way to achieve this. This is akin to a game of tennis that requires two people to responsively pass a ball back-and-forth with full attentiveness. For example, when an infant ‘serves’ to an adult by babbling or making gestures, facial expressions or eye contact, the adult can then immediately ‘return the serve’ by speaking, smiling and hugging the infant.
By responding to a child frequently and consistently, we provide a warm and loving environment that allows them to feel a sense of safety. This is also a simple yet incredibly effective way to help babies build neural connections vital for the development of executive functions and cognitive, emotional and social capabilities. Just as serving and returning builds people’s tennis skills, it builds babies’ brains.
As a child grows up, parents and caregivers can adjust the ways they do this. For example, toddlers and preschool children can greatly benefit from shared reading sessions, where the adult encourages the child to actively participate and pays attention to their feedback. It can be as simple as sitting beside them and turning pages together, jointly interacting with pictures or tactile content in books, and asking questions and pausing for answers.
Alongside shared reading, school-age children will appreciate their caregivers taking an ongoing interest in their hobbies and activities, and providing positive, constructive feedback on their developing skills. Encouraging children to establish a supportive social network with their peers also helps build resilience by helping them form their social identity and gain a sense of belonging; building resilience is after all often a team sport, literally and metaphorically.
Although there are many ways adults can help their children develop resilience, it can of course require a significant amount of time. The lived realities of many New Zealand families – long working hours and financial difficulties – may mean finding the time to spend on activities that build a child’s resilience can be a challenge.
This is why broader supportive policies and programmes are also needed. For example, policies that provide financial and social support to families, such as improved paid parental leave provisions, could ease the burden.
There are many evidence-based programmes that develop capabilities underlying resilience such as problem-solving strategies, interpersonal skills and self-regulation; these could be delivered from early childhood to high school if qualified people were resourced to deliver them. Such school-based initiatives are a valuable way of reaching as many children as possible.
We need to take this seriously. Promoting and building resilience in children and young people is one of the most important preventative approaches to reducing the risk of mental distress later in life.
There may be no single cause of rising mental distress, but there are clear steps we as parents, educators, policymakers, and as a country, can take to give the greatest possible number of our young people the tools to help them flourish in life.
Felicia Low is a co-author, with Seiungyeon Kim, of Promoting resilience in young children and young people.
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