Most adolescents in Latin America’s biggest cities will not develop depression or anxiety, even if they face poverty, violence, or isolation—and this project aims to find out why. The problem is stark: adolescence is when depression and anxiety rates surge, and Latin America is the most urbanised region on Earth, yet most young people remain resilient. Researchers do not yet know which personal or social factors—such as health behaviours, relationships, or community resources—actually prevent these disorders or help people recover within a year. This project will fill that gap by comparing 1,020 adolescents and young people with depression or anxiety to 1,020 without, then tracking those affected over one year to see who recovers and why. If the team identifies specific, modifiable resilience factors, the findings could reshape how schools, youth centres, and health services in rapidly urbanising countries—not just in Latin America but across the Global South—design low-cost interventions. The project also builds local research capacity and uses arts-based methods to engage young people directly, ensuring the results reach the communities they are meant to help.
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Background The numbers of people with depression and anxiety greatly increases during adolescence. Adolescents who live in big cities more commonly experience stressful events such as conflict, poverty, substance misuse and social isolation. This includes adolescents from Latin America - which is the most urban part of the world. Although many individuals experience stressful events, the majority do not develop either depression or anxiety. Furthermore, when people do experience them, up to half recover within a year. This raises the question of what helps people to prevent depression and anxiety, and what helps people recover. We have called these resilience factors. Our aim is to understand resilience factors so we can develop new approaches to treat depression and anxiety. Objectives The overall aim is to identify resilience factors that are linked to either prevention of depression and anxiety, or to recovery. We will focus on adolescents and young people who live in three large Latin American cities - Buenos Aires, Bogotá and Peru. To achieve this, we aim to: 1. Develop new ways of measuring resilience factors that can be used with adolescents and young people, 2. Identify which resilience factors prevent depression and anxiety, 3. Identify which resilience factors help adolescent and young people to recover from depression and anxiety within one year, 4. Develop case studies about existing approaches that promote prevention and recovery, 5. Build up the research skills and knowledge of researchers in Latin America, 6. Involve adolescents and young people through an interactive arts-based project. Methods The project is organised into six work packages (WPs). In the WP1, we will ask young people and staff who work in schools, youth organisations and healthcare services to help us develop new ways of measuring resilience factors to create an assessment tool. The new tool will be used in a study that will compare 1020 adolescents (15-16 years old) and young people (20-24 years old) with depression and anxiety to 1020 adolescents and young people without. We will look at personal factors such as health behaviours and social factors including relationships. We will test if there are differences between the two groups. This will help us discover which factors are linked to prevention. The individuals who have depression and anxiety will be asked to complete the same measures after one year. We will compare individuals who recovered from depression and anxiety to those who did not. This will tell us about recovery. To promote prevention and recovery we will conduct interviews with participants who did and did not recover and with different stakeholders. This will help us identify areas of "good-practice" which we will write up as case studies. This may include initiatives such as health centres or social-groups in the community (WP4). So that researchers in Latin America can continue studying resilience and recovery, we will provide training and activities focused on research skills (WP5). Finally, we want to involve adolescents and young people in our research. To do this, we will run an arts-based project where we will ask those with depression and anxiety to use different materials such as photographs, films, and graffiti to document their experience. We will hold exhibitions to display the art. We hope this will encourage other young people to get involved in research (WP6). Expected results The project will lead to new knowledge about what prevents depression and anxiety and what help people recover. Understanding this will help us develop new approaches to improve the mental health of adolescents and young people and reduce the burden of mental disorders. Our communication methods will ensure the research is widely disseminated. Although the project focuses on Latin America, our learning will help other countries, including many Low and Middle Income countries, which are becoming more urban.
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