Building resilience and resources to overcome depression and anxiety in young people from urban neighbourhoods in Latin America

Project: Research

Project Details

Description

Depression and anxiety are leading causes of youth disability worldwide. Risk factors such as social isolation, conflict, internal displacement and poverty, are common in urban environments. Despite this, many adolescents and young people do not develop either condition and up to 50% who do experience an episode recover within a year. Our aim is to identify resilience factors associated with prevention and recovery from depression and anxiety in adolescents and young people from urban regions in three Latin American countries. To achieve this we will: -Develop appropriate methods of assessing resilience factors in adolescents and young people in Argentina, Colombia and Peru, -Identify resilience factors associated with prevention and recovery from depression and anxiety, -Develop case studies of existing initiatives to amplify these factors, -Engage stakeholders in a participatory arts-based project giving voice to adolescents and young people, -Increase research capacity within Latin American institutions. We will conduct a cross-sectional study of adolescents and young people to assess whether resilience factors differ between 1020 individuals with and 1020 without depression and anxiety to determine which factors may be associated with prevention. The group with either condition will be followed up for one-year in a prospective cohort study to compare those who do and do not recover. Good practice qualitative case studies involving multiple stakeholders will identify existing approaches to amplifying these resilience factors. Our particular focus is on urban environments in Latin America - the most urbanised region in the world, where youth make up a quarter of the population. Identifying resilience factors in this population is crucial for developing new approaches to reduce the burden of common mental disorders. The knowledge generated has the potential to generalise to other Latin American countries and LMICs with rapid urbanisation.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date01/09/1931/08/24

Project funding

  • International
  • QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON