Socio-emotional skills that promote resilience

Currently, concern about mental health and the problems that impact the emotional well-being of the adolescent and young population continues to grow. According to figures from the Youth Barometer on Health and Well-being (2023) , more than half of young Spanish people (59%) consider that they have suffered a mental health problem in the last year. When asked about the presence of emotional discomfort , this figure reaches more than 70%, with the most frequent being sadness, feeling down, apathy, concentration problems or continuous drowsiness.

Many international initiatives that aim to promote mental health in adolescents and young people are based on the concept of resilience as a central pillar. This concept refers to the ability to cope with stressful and difficult everyday events, as well as a person's ability to adapt to difficult situations, to persist in the face of adversity or to recover after a traumatic or adverse event.

What is resilience and why is it important in adolescence?

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When we talk about mental health, it is important to differentiate between mental health problems and the emotional distress that impacts adolescents. On the one hand, we find mental problems or disorders , such as depression disorders, anxiety disorders or eating disorders. On the other hand, we find psychological distress , which does not refer to mental disorders, although it does have a negative impact on the mental health of adolescents and the well-being of adolescents. To reduce emotional distress in this population, specialized health care is not required, but we must focus on prevention from the adolescent's immediate context, which is why the family and educational centers and the socio-community context play a very relevant role. For this reason, training the adolescent population in skills that promote resilience is a key strategy for the future that is related to lower psychological vulnerability and a healthier attitude and management of life's challenges, which will greatly help to achieve greater tolerance for emotional discomfort.

Training the adolescent population in skills that promote resilience will greatly help to increase tolerance for emotional distress.

Training resilience skills

Resilience encompasses a whole series of personal tools –skills or socio-emotional and cognitive capacities– that can be trained. According to the European project UPRIGHT , which has been implemented globally in educational centers to improve the mental health of the adolescent population in different countries, to promote resilience in adolescence it is necessary to take into account four components:

1. Socio-emotional learning.
2. The ability to be present or mindfulness.
3. The feeling of being capable or self-efficacy.
4. Coping strategies.

Socio-emotional learning

Among the socio-emotional learning skills, the following stand out:

• Emotional self-regulation . Schools and families can help them develop strategies to identify and regulate emotions. This involves labeling them and then having adaptive emotional responses to manage them. It is also important to create environments where emotions are recognized, validated, and allowed to be expressed.
• Social awareness . Developing empathy, that is, the ability to put yourself in the shoes of others and understand their emotions and thoughts, is a way to develop greater resilience without having to experience stressful situations firsthand, through the experiences of others.
• Interpersonal skills . Promoting them to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships with their peers is completely linked to being more resilient. This involves collaborating with others for the common good, being able to resolve interpersonal conflicts constructively and offering, asking for or receiving help when necessary. It is about helping them to have trusting relationships that generate a perception of support and validation from their environment.
• The ability to make responsible decisions . Another way to be more resilient is to foster the ability to value the different scenarios we face on a daily basis and train them in making responsible decisions.
• The capacity for self-awareness . Helping them recognize themselves as individuals with their own moods, thoughts, and reactions can help develop this capacity, to be more in touch with their internal states in the present, and to have a greater sense of self-efficacy and motivation to achieve their own goals.

Full attention

There are proven benefits to cultivating mindfulness in the present moment . The practice of mindfulness, which comes from Eastern currents, has shown evidence for more than 30 years in reducing stress and other physical and psychological problems. This practice can be very helpful for the adolescent population, as it allows you to connect with the present moment and feel emotions without judging them. This can help reduce impulsiveness when acting or making decisions and connect with our internal states.

Feeling of being capable

The feeling of self-efficacy, that is, increasing the perception of feeling capable of achieving the goals you set, is another key to promoting resilience. It is key that adolescents can feel that they can carry out the necessary actions that will lead them to achieve their life goals. When an adolescent does not perceive themselves capable of achieving what they want, they create their own limitations that make them not even try, believing that they will not be able to achieve it.

When an adolescent does not perceive themselves as capable of achieving what they want, they create their own limitations that prevent them from even trying, believing that they will not be able to achieve it.

Coping strategies

Being able to develop effective coping strategies is key for adolescents, as it is a period of great challenges and new experiences. Some of these strategies are, for example, assertive communication strategies. Practicing assertive communication will help them reduce the stress that these new or difficult situations generate.

It is important to highlight that schools and families play a crucial role in promoting emotional well-being in adolescence. Educational spaces offer the opportunity to implement universal prevention programs that also involve families in promoting psychological well-being. For this reason, it is key to provide teachers with the necessary knowledge and advice on how to promote skills that foster resilience in the classroom.

The importance of promoting resilience in adolescent students

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Regarding the role of the family in promoting well-being, when adolescents feel their family as a support or refuge, the family context is perceived as a safe space. This feeling of emotional and relational security is key to developing the individual resilience that comes from resilient parenting. For this reason, it is key to provide families with expert guidance so that they acquire tools on how to foster resilience in their adolescent sons or daughters.