As our worlds get more complex and interconnected, the forces that can compromise our health, relationships, focus, learning, memory and motivation can easily become overwhelming. We need to develop new perspectives, habits and resources to meet these destabilizing forces, and to build resilience into our lives. Few scholars are more qualified to define and discuss Resilience in all its forms than Dr. Suna Egeryit-Madzwamuse.

Dr. Eryigit-Madzwamuse has been an Associate Professor of Human Development, Learning and Culture in the  department of Education at UBC since 2022. Before that she was a faculty member at the University of Brighton, in the School of Sport and Health Sciences. There she served as the Deputy Director of the Centre for Resilience for Social Justice at the University of Brighton since 2017. Her current research focuses on understanding the risks and protective mechanisms associated with youth development and wellbeing.

In this episode she helps to orient us in the fast-growing field of Resilience research, defining what it shares with Wellness Theory and where these two fields diverge. Our conversation revolved around the situation of young people, and especially teenagers, whose deteriorating mental health outcomes are indicative of broader deficits in our schools and cultures, the insufficiency and toxicity of online communities, and the missing meaning in their developing lives. Suna’s research and message about how communities thrive and how youth can be made to feel like they matter are not to be missed.

Some topics and resources to listen for and take further:

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  • The Characteristics of Wellbeing:
    
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    • Freedom from intolerable pain and stressors
      
    • Developing strengths and positive attributes
      
    • The health, wellness and coherence of relationships and community
      
    • The expectation of further mobility, progress and improvement
      
    
    
    
  • Carl Rogers’s Humanistic/Holistic Self-Concept Approach
    
  • Positive Psychology’s Strength-Based Approach
    
  • Public Health’s influence on “Wellness”
    
  • The Growing Mental Health Crisis for young people
    
  • The Adultification of young people
    
  • Impacts of Climate Change threat on teen Mental Health
    
  • 50% of adult-life Mental Illness indicators emerged between ages 10-16
    
  • The Need for a Trusted Adult
    
  • Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory
    
  • Erikson’s Stages of Development
    
  • Dr. Suna’s research on Blackpool’s “Bounce Forward”  and “Resilience Revolution” program
    
  • Isaac Prilleltensky’s work on Mattering
    
  
  
  

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