Teaching children to be resilient could be key to their future mental health

Aug 31, 2018

Students play with their soccer balls as they walk among crop fields to the Sunji Township Centre Primary School during sunrise in Sunji township of Shanghe county, Shandong province March 25, 2015. The rural primary school founded its male and female soccer teams in 2012 by selecting 30 players out of about 300 students. Despite the lack of infrastructures and coaching conditions, both teams have won good scores at municipal-level student soccer competitions in last two years, local media reported. China's footballing stars of the future need to start being trained from birth, the government said at the end of February as President Xi Jinping signed off on a new plan to boost the country's much-maligned efforts at the sport. Picture taken March 25, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer CHINA OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN CHINA. TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY.

There are 12.5m young people in England, and one in ten will experience poor mental health. Image: REUTERS/Stringer

Karen Newbigging

Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham

Our Impact

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Mental Health is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Mental Health

Image: Birmingham University

Image: Olga Enger/Shutterstock

Have you read?

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

The Agenda Weekly

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

Subscribe today

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.

More on Mental Health
See all

Pills alone can’t treat HIV in adolescents. They need psychological support, too

Sarah Bernays and Nicola Willis

December 1, 2023

What's 'holistic health' and how does it relate to improved performance at work?

Charlotte Edmond

November 27, 2023

WHO declares loneliness a health threat, and other health stories you need to know this week

Shyam Bishen

November 23, 2023

This man is on a mission to cure paralysis in our lifetime. Here’s his story

Ewan Thomson

November 20, 2023

1:25

Flexible working boosts heart health, Harvard study finds

Why creating a psychologically safe workplace is key to high performance in uncertain times

Dustin Seale

November 9, 2023