The correlation between resilience and mental health of adolescents and young adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Summary & key facts

This paper combined 19 studies with about 17,700 young people aged 10–25 to measure how resilience relates to mental health. The researchers found that higher resilience tended to go with fewer negative mental-health signs like anxiety and depression, and with stronger positive wellbeing. The review supports the idea that resilience is linked to better mental health in this age group, but all the studies were observational so we cannot say resilience causes those benefits.

Key facts:

• The authors searched five major databases up to September 2024 and included 19 observational studies that together had about 17,700 participants aged 10 to 25.
• Resilience had a moderate negative relationship with negative mental-health indicators, with an average correlation around -0.39; this means that, in general, young people with higher resilience tended to report fewer symptoms such as anxie
• Resilience had a moderately strong positive relationship with positive mental-health indicators, with an average correlation around 0.50; in other words, higher resilience was linked to better life satisfaction, well-being, or quality of li
• The strength of the link between resilience and positive mental health varied depending on where the study was done and which resilience measure the researchers used.
• All included studies were observational (they measured links at single times or over time without assigning resilience), so the results show association but do not prove that resilience causes changes in mental health.
• The review used standard methods for combining studies and checked for issues like sensitivity and bias, but differences between studies (for example, how resilience or mental health were measured) limit how precisely we can generalize the

Abstract

Resilience in AYAs showed a moderately negative correlation with negative indicators of mental health and a moderately strong positive correlation with positive indicators of mental health. The findings strengthened the basis for future resilience research in AYAs aged 10-25, highlighting the potential of resilience to help mitigate the increasing mental health challenges faced by this population.

Topics

Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development Resilience and Mental Health Traumatic Brain Injury Research

Categories

Clinical Psychology Psychology Social Sciences

Tags

Clinical psychology Correlation Geometry Internal medicine Law Mathematics Medicine MEDLINE Mental health Meta-analysis Observational study Physics Political science Psychiatry Psychological resilience Psychology Resilience (materials science) Scopus Social psychology Thermodynamics

Conditions & symptoms

Anxiety Depression Anxiety or worry Feeling disconnected from others Lack of energy or motivation Sadness or low mood