Building Strengths-Based Resilience in Students

Promoting mental health encourages the development of resilience. The reverse is also true: promoting resilience leads to better mental health. As resilience involves being able to recover from difficulties or change—to function as well as before and then move forward – students who are resilient can effectively cope with, or adapt to, stress and challenging life situations. Strengths-based resilience is designed to help students develop resilience, to equip them with knowledge, and then to use their strengths in difficult times. The Millennial Generation faces a number of paradoxes – digitally connected yet increasingly isolated, socially engaged yet psychologically stressed, inclusive yet self-centred. These paradoxes are unlikely to be resolved by academic achievement. Nor is inoculation from these challenges possible or desired. To deal adaptively with these challenges, students need resilience. Capturing this complexity, at post-secondary campuses in the context of mental health, this webinar presents the Strengths-Based Resilience (SBR) program. Supported through the Mental Health Innovation Funds (MHIF), SBR aims to teach students evidence-based skills to solve every day program by boosting resilience and wellbeing. The webinar will present a session-by-session overview of the program and evidence it has garnered thus far in enhancing resilience and well-being and decreasing stress and stigma.