Fostering emotional resilience among youth: Using youth narratives to promote understanding and connectedness between youth and adults

Emotional resilience refers to a person's capacity to develop positively despite adversity and can be understood as a process that develops over time and in specific personal and environmental contexts. Without a capacity for resilience, emotional distress including anxiety and stress can accrue, leading to increased vulnerability to mental illness. As 1.2 million Canadian children and youth suffer from mental illness, fostering resilience in Canadian youth in timely and necessary. Research shows that connectedness, or meaningful connection, between youth and adults can enhance emotional resilience among youth. Our community-based study will take place in three locations in British Columbia (Fort St. James, Kelowna, and Vancouver) and will first explore youth's experiences of emotional distress in order to account for their lived experiences. Next, we will share our findings from the youth interviews in workshop settings with adults as a means of fostering connection between youth and adults. We will then conduct follow-up interviews with our workshop participants to assess the impact of this approach in promoting youth and adult connectedness. Ultimately, this study will increase our understanding of youth's experiences of emotional distress and of ways to promote connectedness between youth and adults to foster emotional resilience in youth.