L Theron
Biographic Data
| ID | 50195 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L Theron |
| GIVEN NAMES | L |
| FAMILY NAME | Theron |
| SIGNATURE | THERON L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pretoria |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3979-5782 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 76 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 150 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 75 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Understanding atypical resilience enablers of street youth in Harare, Zimbabwe
There is limited understanding of the circumstances leading street youth to rely on atypical resilience enablers. Atypical resilience enablers are unconventional strategies, often negatively judged by society or the law, which allow street youth to survive on the streets. We respond to this knowledge gap by documenting a 2REST study (Responsibilities for Resilience Embedded in Street Temporalities), exploring atypical resilience enablers of Harar…
Conceptualising street youth lived resilience in African cities
Youth, embedded in street life in African cities, experience multiple daily and longer-term stressors which impact their socio-economic circumstances and capacities to meet their basic needs. Urban contexts of high unemployment, inequality, and poverty result in homeless youth, often with incomplete schooling, unable to secure a decent living through hustling in the informal economy, access safe spaces to sleep, nutritious food, and subject to vi…
Resilience among South African high school students in communities experiencing continuous traumatic stress
These findings underscore the necessity of a comprehensive, multisystemic approach in resilience research and practice, highlighting how synergistic resource combinations can foster positive outcomes despite pervasive trauma in underserved populations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Mapping multisystemic protective resources supporting resilience among street youth
Street youth face and overcome multiple challenges. While these challenges are well-documented, also in systematic reviews, the resources facilitating street youth resilience to these challenges have not been synthesized. To close this gap, we conducted a systematic scoping review of studies reporting street youth experiences of resources that enabled them to effectively cope with street-related challenges. Scoping the literature involved a syste…
The role of multisystemic resilience in fostering critical agency
Critical agency (CA) refers to an individual’s feeling of power in relation to social inequalities. Research has demonstrated that high CA is associated with positive adolescent outcomes, however, less is known about what supports are important for its development. Moreover, a large majority of the literature is based on studies from the US and various countries in Africa; although the UK is saturated with inequalities there is little research wi…
The Covid-19 resilience journey of vulnerable young South Africans
Resilience, the ability to adapt well to adversity, is a critical factor in the well-being and success of young individuals. This study explored the multifaceted nature of resilience among South African youth challenged by COVID-related stressors and structural disadvantage. Specifically, this paper reports a follow-up qualitative leg of a sequential mixed-method design. Thirty-eight young adults (average age 24), all of whom reported high risk e…
Neet and resilient
There is scant understanding of what supports African emerging adults who are not in employment, education or training (i.e., NEET) to show resilience to NEET‐related challenges. This article narrows that gap by reporting an iterative phenomenological study with nine African emerging adults (mean age: 23.44; 66% female) who were NEET for the 18‐month duration of the study and living in a resource‐constrained community in South Africa. We intervie…
Resilience to Depression Among Emerging Adults in South Africa
Emerging adults facing chronic socioeconomic stress, especially depression, lack comprehensive research on resilience factors. This study analyzed digital diary entries ( n = 338) from 57 individuals aged 18–24 in a South African township from July 2021 to April 2022. Participants highlighted relational, community, and cultural supports regardless of risk levels. Both high and low-risk groups faced challenges like financial instability, limited e…
Social-ecological-resilience enablers among youth residing in the air polluted Highveld Priority Area of South Africa
Young people living in low-income settlements face numerous challenges ranging from violence to polluted environments. However, many of them find ways in which to overcome these challenges for their own growth and development. These 'ways' are known as resilience-enablers. We studied the resilience enablers of 240 adolescents living in the highly air polluted area in South Africa. Using the draw-and-write technique, this qualitative study entaile…
Resilience to structural violence
Youth in structurally violent environments emphasise hope when explaining their resilience. Even so, the multisystemic resources that enable hope (also over time) are relatively underreported for African young people. In response to this gap, we report a qualitative study that identified the hope-enabling resources that contributed to the resilience of two samples of African youth aged 15–24 and living in the township of eMbalenhle, South Africa.…
South African emerging adults' capacity for resilience in the face of Covid-19 stressors
Little is known about resilience responses to COVID-19 stressors from emerging adults in minority world contexts. In this cross-sectional study, we explored the association between self-reported COVID-19 stressors and capacity for resilience in 351 emerging adults (Meanage = 24.45, SD = 2.57; 68% female) who self-identified as Black African. We were interested in whether age, gender and neighbourhood quality influenced this association. The main …
The association between family adversity and youth mental health outcomes
BACKGROUND: The association between family adversity and young people's mental health outcomes in communities that experience economic instability has not been well explored in the South African context. Furthermore, the overtime interaction between resilience factors, family adversity, and young people's psychological functioning in African settings, like South Africa, is under-investigated. PURPOSE: This study investigates the relationship betw…
The Resilience of Emerging Adults in a Stressed Industrialised Environment in Eswatini
Transitioning to adulthood can be stressful, particularly when young people live in challenging contexts. One such context is Eswatini, a low-income African country challenged by structural violence. Still, how Swazi emerging adults mitigate related challenges is unknown. To redress this knowledge gap, we report a qualitative study with 30 Swazi emerging adults (15 men; 15 women; 18-to-24-years) living in Matsapha, an industrial hub characterised…
Resilience of sub-Saharan children and adolescents
The population of sub-Saharan children and adolescents is substantial and growing. Even though most of this population is vulnerable, there is no comprehensive understanding of the social-ecological factors that could be leveraged by mental health practitioners to support their resilience. The present study undertakes a narrative scoping review of empirical research (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed) on the resilience of children and adolesce…
Emerging Adult Resilience to the Early Stages of the Covid-Pandemic
Human resilience to COVID-19 related stressors remains a pressing concern following the aftereffects of the pandemic and in the face of probable future pandemics. In response, we systematically scoped the available literature (n = 2030 records) to determine the nature and extent of research on emerging adults' adaptive responses to COVID-19 stressors in the early stages of the pandemic. Using a multisystem resilience framework, our narrative revi…
Multisystemic Resources Matter for Resilience to Depression
This article interrogates the continuing emphasis on personal sources of resilience; it also amends the inattention to the protective factors and processes (PFPs) that support the mental health resilience of African emerging adults. To that end, we report a study that explored which PFPs distinguished risk-exposed South African 18- to 29-year-olds with negligible depression symptoms from those who reported moderate to severe symptoms. Using an ar…
Differential Adaptation to Adversity
Using person-centered latent profile analyses, this article reports two distinct sub-groups—nominal versus robust cultural allegiance—that characterize how a sample of 14- to 24-year-olds from stressed environments in South Africa ( n = 576, n females = 314, n males = 257) and Canada ( n =V481; n females = 270, n males = 211) engage with four cultural resources (spirituality, religiosity, family tradition, and community tradition). It considers h…
Understanding the Mechanisms through Which Family Risk Affects Adolescent Mental Health
There is substantial evidence that exposure to family adversity significantly and negatively impacts positive adolescent development by placing adolescents at increased risk of experiencing developmental difficulties, including conduct problems. Although the mechanisms responsible for these effects are still largely unknown, a novel line of inquiry in the resilience field conceptualizes positive adaptation, following exposure to atypical adversit…
Respiratory health among adolescents living in the Highveld Air Pollution Priority Area in South Africa
Adolescents living in air polluted areas experience adverse health impacts Future research should interrogate long-term exposure and health outcomes among adolescents living in the air polluted environment
Children’s perspectives of psychosocial help-seeking in Kenya
There is little knowledge on how children perceive psychosocial supports and seek help in resource-constrained settings. The aim of this study was to establish these perspectives among 22 children aged 7–10 years living in a disadvantaged community in Kenya. Children discussed available resources in response to three scenarios of common life stressors. Focus group discussions were subjected to thematic analysis. Children regularly sought internal…
Digital storytelling with South African youth
Purpose In this paper the authors share, and reflect critically on, the experience of using digital storytelling (DS) methods in a South African township. We interrogate the innovations prompted as we operationalized DS in a context that has historically prized collectivist values and that experiences chronic resource constraints. Design/methodology/approach The authors ask: How can DS be optimally used to understand youth resilience in a collect…
Flourishing communities
Communities often face numerous challenges and opportunities - situations that may be reduced to specific domains by researchers, policy makers and interventionists. This study informs and animate a new "flourishing community" model that seeks to build collective capacity to respond to challenges and opportunities. Our work is a response to children living on the streets, whose families face myriad challenges. The Sustainable Development Goals ma…
Perceptions of thermal comfort and coping mechanisms related to indoor and outdoor temperatures among participants living in rural villages in Limpopo province, South Africa
Global heating is considered one of the greatest threats to human health and well-being. Supporting human resilience to heating threats is imperative, but under-investigated. In response, this article reports a study that drew together results from quantitative data on perceptions of thermal comfort and mechanisms for coping with thermal discomfort among 406 households in a study in Giyani, Limpopo province. Indoor dwelling and outdoor temperatur…
Multisystemic Resilience
Youth resilience is the product of multiple systems. Still, the biological, psychological, social, and environmental system factors that support youth resilience are incompletely understood. How these factors interact, and the situational and cultural dynamics shaping their interconnectedness, are also under-researched. In response, we report a multi-site case study that is instrumental to understanding multisystemic resilience. It draws on the i…
Family Resilience in a Resource‐Cursed Community Dependent on the Oil and Gas Industry
The economic and social well‐being of rural, “resource‐cursed” communities can depend on the boom‐bust cycles of a single industry like oil and gas. This study used a constructivist, inductive approach to identify the challenges placed on families in one such community and the processes that strengthen family resilience. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 35 adult residents (30–76 years old, 19 women) from a community in Alberta, Cana…
Toward a Culturally and Contextually Sensitive Understanding of Resilience
Extant theories of resilience, or the process of adjusting well to adversity, privilege the voices of minority-world young people. Consequently, the resilience of marginalized, majority-world youth is imperfectly understood, and majority-world social ecologies struggle to facilitate resilience in ways that respect the insights of majority-world youth and their cultural and contextual positioning. Accordingly, this article makes audible, as it wer…
Toward an African Definition of Resilience
Resilience, or adaptive behavior in the face of adversity, has recently come to be understood as a phenomenon that should not be uniformly conceptualized across contexts and cultures. This emerging understanding has urged exploration of what resilience might mean in specific cultural contexts. As in other majority nation contexts, there is scant documentation of what resilience might mean in an African context. In this article, the authors report…
Resilient street youth
Only quite recently have researchers begun to conceptualize street youth as resilient. The findings from our qualitative phenomenological study with 20 adolescent street youth in South Africa augment this transformed conceptualization. Using individual and focus-group interview data, we offer a novel argument that street youth resilience is embedded in a socio-cultural context characterized by stories of adults who have beaten the odds, lived exp…
Education services and resilience processes
The resilience literature is increasingly drawing attention to formal service provision as a means for social ecologies to support children's and youths' positive adjustment to challenging life circumstances. This article interrogates the universality and simplicity of this argument. Using a secondary data analysis of the life stories of 16 resilient, Black South African students from impoverished families, we show that education services predomi…
Using video observation and photo elicitation interviews to understand obscured processes in the lives of youth resilience
Despite the increased effort to understand resilience processes in the lives of youth, the homogeneity of a largely westernized concept needs to be challenged in studies by incorporating meanings of resilience more relevant to youth around the globe. This requires a reconsideration of the methods used to study youth resilience. This article outlines the interactive dialogical process involved in visual elicitation methods that combine moving and …
A 'Day in the Lives' of Four Resilient Youths
Grounded in the examples of four impoverished, relocated youths (two Sesotho-speaking orphans in South Africa and two Mexican immigrants in Canada), we explore cultural factors as potential roots of resilience. We triangulate rich qualitative findings (visual, dialogical, and observational) to foreground the particular, as well as acknowledge the universal, in explicating resilience in transitional contexts. Resilience-promoting cultural practice…
How Schools Enhance the Development of Young People's Resilience
Resilience Research with South African Youth
Studies of resilience, or the process of adjusting well to major challenges commonly associated with negative outcomes, have proliferated in recent years. Despite the popularity of this research focus, there are suggestions (anecdotal and published) that the study of resilience needs to be interrogated. In this article, I respond to these suggestions by offering a synthesis of the international critiques (published from 2000 to 2012) levelled at …
Transforming Social Ecologies to Enable Resilience Among Girls and Young Women in the Context of Sexual Violence
Exacerbated by the unequal gender norms and practices that characterise the social ecologies in which individuals and groups negotiate their lives, sexual violence and coercive sex are pressing con
Visual Perspectives on Majority‐World Adolescent Thriving
This paper offers socio‐ecological, situated perspectives on adolescent resilience derived from an application of interpretive visual methodologies to deepen understanding of adaptive youth development in diverse majority‐world cultural contexts ( S outh A frica, T hailand, C hina, M exican migration to C anada). The research is not “cross‐cultural”; by contrast, it situates youth engagement contextually, using local perspectives, especially pers…
The Hidden Resilience of Street Youth
The phenomenon of resilience among street children as a group of at-risk youth goes unnoticed, since they are not typically regarded as resilient. Street children are mostly categorised as vulnerable youth who need care and support, and this deficit view ignores the assets and resources that enable them towards resilience. Nevertheless, street children are remarkably resilient. Using a qualitative approach (semi-structured and focus group intervi…
Multisystemic Resilience
Youth resilience is the product of multiple systems. Still, the biological, psychological, social, and environmental system factors that support youth resilience are incompletely understood. How these factors interact, and the situational and cultural dynamics shaping their interconnectedness, are also under-researched. In response, we report a multi-site case study that is instrumental to understanding multisystemic resilience. It draws on the i…
Social-ecological resilience through a biocultural lens
Ungar, M., J. McRuer, X. Liu, L. Theron, D. Blais, and M. A. Schnurr. 2020. Social-ecological resilience through a biocultural lens: a participatory methodology to support global targets and local priorities. Ecology and Society 25(3):8. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11621-250308
Adolescent Versus Adult Explanations of Resilience Enablers
This aim of this article is to account for the resilience of adolescents who are challenged by structural disadvantage and to highlight that how adolescent resilience is accounted for depends on whether adolescent or adult views are foregrounded. To do so, I report a South African phenomenological study. I draw on a thematic content analysis of qualitative data and subsequent frequency count of the themes to contrast how 385 Black adolescents and…
A Pillar of Strength’
Only a limited number of resilience studies report what challenges and enables adolescents living in townships. Even fewer report the aforementioned from the perspective of adolescents themselves. Given that resilience is a contextually and developmentally sensitive process, it is an oversight to marginalize the risk- and resilience-related insights of township-dwelling adolescents. We correct this oversight in this article. To this end, we repor…
Explanations of resilience in women and girls
Researching resilience
Theories of youth resilience neglect youths' lived experiences of what facilitates positive adjustment to hardship. The Pathways-to-Resilience Study addressed this by inviting Canadian, Chinese, Colombian, New Zealand and South African (SA) youths to share their resilience-related knowledge. In this article I report the challenges endemic to the rural, resource-poor, South African research site that complicated this Pathways ideal. I illustrate t…
The Power of Me”
In this article we explore how individual expressions of agency are shaped by structural factors and exercised by Black African girls with child sexual abuse (CSA) histories as they navigate resilience pathways. We employed a qualitative multiple instrumental case study design and purposefully recruited seven Black African girls, between the ages of 15 and 18 years, with a history of CSA. Participants were engaged in a range of participatory meth…
Visual methods in resilience research
The potential of the visual image to foster reflection and to mobilise individuals and communities into action coupled with its capacity to bridge language and cultural divides has made the inclusion of visual methods (VMs) increasingly popular in resilience research as well as in research on sexual violence. In spite of this popularity, VMs are not beyond criticism and there have been calls to scrutinise the efficacy of VMs in research. Our aim,…
Using the Cyrm-28 With South African Young People
Purpose: The factor structure of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-28) was originally established using a Canadian sample. This factor structure was not confirmed in a study with New Zealand youth. Given such variability, the current study investigated the factor structure of the CYRM-28 in a sample of Sesotho-speaking South African youth who participated in Pathways to Resilience Study. Method: Using latent variable modeling, we teste…
Rethinking Rorschach Interpretation
We explore Exner's Rorschach Comprehensive System as a schema-processing task to understand how six Black 1 South African adolescents' personal constructions informed their transactional resilience. Transactional resilience is conceptualised as a process of meaning-making of present and past experiences to knit a healthy sense of self. We first provide a framework for a culturally sensitive, conceptual Rorschach interpretation. Then, using six ca…
Multisystemic Resources Matter for Resilience to Depression
This article interrogates the continuing emphasis on personal sources of resilience; it also amends the inattention to the protective factors and processes (PFPs) that support the mental health resilience of African emerging adults. To that end, we report a study that explored which PFPs distinguished risk-exposed South African 18- to 29-year-olds with negligible depression symptoms from those who reported moderate to severe symptoms. Using an ar…
Flourishing communities
Communities often face numerous challenges and opportunities - situations that may be reduced to specific domains by researchers, policy makers and interventionists. This study informs and animate a new "flourishing community" model that seeks to build collective capacity to respond to challenges and opportunities. Our work is a response to children living on the streets, whose families face myriad challenges. The Sustainable Development Goals ma…
I just gotta have tough skin”
Working memory and psychological resilience in South African emerging adults
The role of cognitive factors, such as working memory, in psychological resilience has not been widely investigated, although a few studies tentatively suggest a positive association. Given the contextually embedded nature of resilience, sociocultural factors may also influence any relationship between working memory and resilience, and so a concurrent triangulation, mixed method design, located in a socioecological model, was employed to explore…
The impact of the HIV epidemic on the composite wellbeing of educators in South Africa
In South Africa, support is available for educators who are HIV-positive, and there are numerous initiatives to curb further HIV infections. What is lacking though is an understanding of how the HIV epidemic impacts on educators who are affected personally or professionally. For this reason a qualitative study was undertaken with 25 affected educators from the Gauteng and Free State provinces. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to determin…
I have undergone some metamorphosis!” The Impact of REds on South African Educators Affected by the Hiv/Aids Pandemic. A Pilot Study
The study investigated the efficacy of Resilient Educators (REds), a group intervention program, designed to empower educators affected by the HIV/Aids pandemic and in research in progress. Fifteen participants (three male; twelve female) from various primary schools in two different South African communities were involved. Participant ages ranged from early thirties to mid-fifties. A pre-test, post-test design was conducted. Visual data were col…
The support needs of South African educators affected by HIV and Aids
In a qualitative study of 77 South African educators, participants were asked to explain how they are affected by HIV and AIDS and how they would best like to be supported in response to this. The term 'affected' refers to educators who have colleagues, learners or loved ones who are HIV-positive or who have died from HIV-related illnesses, or those who teach children orphaned by AIDS or learners who are vulnerable because of a parent's or caregi…
Strangers, Patients, Monsters, Jailers, or Children
Manganese poisoning (MP) is one of many chronic, degenerative conditions that result in spousal caregiver stress. Partners who were once fully functioning become strangers to those who love them. In time, spousal caregivers may come to view their erstwhile partners as patients, jailers, monsters, or bratty children. We explore spousal caregiver perceptions of loved ones with MP, based on the narrated experiences of five full-time South African ca…
Resilient street youth
Only quite recently have researchers begun to conceptualize street youth as resilient. The findings from our qualitative phenomenological study with 20 adolescent street youth in South Africa augment this transformed conceptualization. Using individual and focus-group interview data, we offer a novel argument that street youth resilience is embedded in a socio-cultural context characterized by stories of adults who have beaten the odds, lived exp…
The Hidden Resilience of Street Youth
The phenomenon of resilience among street children as a group of at-risk youth goes unnoticed, since they are not typically regarded as resilient. Street children are mostly categorised as vulnerable youth who need care and support, and this deficit view ignores the assets and resources that enable them towards resilience. Nevertheless, street children are remarkably resilient. Using a qualitative approach (semi-structured and focus group intervi…
Picturing Research
As members of a team of researchers involved in piloting a module titled "Being a Teacher in the Context of the HIV and AIDS Pandemic", we came into contact with many dedicated teacher educators and teachers in South Africa who were keen to use participatory methods in their classrooms.We dedicate this book to the people who continually inspire us to do this kind of work.vii
Drawings as Research Method
The use of drawings in social research is located within several broad yet overlapping areas of contemporary study. These include arts-based or artsinformed research (Knowles & Cole, 2008), participatory visual methodologies (De Lange, Mitchell, & Stuart, 2007; Rose, 2001), textual approaches in visual studies in the social sciences (Mitchell, 2011), as well as the use of drawings in psychology.
Voices of HIV&Aids-affected educators
The aim of this article is to hear the voices of HIV- and AIDS-affected educators regarding their experiences of the psychosocial effect that the HIV and AIDS pandemic has on them as well as to voice their experiences of how Resilient Educators (REds), a support programme to enable educators affected by HIV and AIDS towards resilience, enabled them. A qualitative study was undertaken with 100 affected educators from different provinces in South A…
Rethinking Rorschach Interpretation
We explore Exner's Rorschach Comprehensive System as a schema-processing task to understand how six Black 1 South African adolescents' personal constructions informed their transactional resilience. Transactional resilience is conceptualised as a process of meaning-making of present and past experiences to knit a healthy sense of self. We first provide a framework for a culturally sensitive, conceptual Rorschach interpretation. Then, using six ca…
A critical reflection on the participatory action process involved in the development of a Cognitive-behavioural-based Counselling Intervention Programme for youth living with HIV/Aids in a rural Sout…
South Africa currently lacks HIV counselling interventions that are youth-specific and that meet the psychosocial needs of young people living with HIV/AIDS. Indigenous strategies and interventions need to be developed that cater for the psychosocial needs of South African youth living with HIV/AIDS. By using Participatory Action Research (PAR) a Cognitive-behavioural-based Counselling Intervention Programme (CBCIP) was developed for use in a rur…
A 'Day in the Lives' of Four Resilient Youths
Grounded in the examples of four impoverished, relocated youths (two Sesotho-speaking orphans in South Africa and two Mexican immigrants in Canada), we explore cultural factors as potential roots of resilience. We triangulate rich qualitative findings (visual, dialogical, and observational) to foreground the particular, as well as acknowledge the universal, in explicating resilience in transitional contexts. Resilience-promoting cultural practice…
Read me to resilience’
The study explored whether and how culturally sensitive stories can encourage resilience in young children orphaned by AIDS. The purpose of the investigation was allied to the paradigm of positive psychology, which focuses on the promotion of potential strengths to buffer children against adversity, as well as on social ecological understandings of resilience, which emphasise that social ecologies have a duty to facilitate children's positive adj…
Supporting Lesotho teachers to develop resilience in the face of the HIV and Aids pandemic
Resilience Research with South African Youth
Studies of resilience, or the process of adjusting well to major challenges commonly associated with negative outcomes, have proliferated in recent years. Despite the popularity of this research focus, there are suggestions (anecdotal and published) that the study of resilience needs to be interrogated. In this article, I respond to these suggestions by offering a synthesis of the international critiques (published from 2000 to 2012) levelled at …
Resilience in the Face of Fragile X Syndrome
In this article, we communicate transformative findings from a case study on the resilience of a young woman with fragile X syndrome (FXS), a genetic condition involving mental impairment and physical, emotional, and behavioral challenges. We explored the resilience of "Lucy," a spirited 16-year-old North American, using informal interviews with her, formal interviews with significant adults in her life, and observations (visual and anecdotal) ov…
Positive adjustment to poverty
In the main, resilience literature explains positive adjustment to adversity in ways that are biased towards western culture. Although studies of resilience among African Americans have reported the importance of kinship, a typically Africentric concept, no studies have explored how family communities promote youths’ positive adjustment, particularly in contexts of poverty. Family communities are a feature of traditional African culture and compr…
Visual Perspectives on Majority‐World Adolescent Thriving
This paper offers socio‐ecological, situated perspectives on adolescent resilience derived from an application of interpretive visual methodologies to deepen understanding of adaptive youth development in diverse majority‐world cultural contexts ( S outh A frica, T hailand, C hina, M exican migration to C anada). The research is not “cross‐cultural”; by contrast, it situates youth engagement contextually, using local perspectives, especially pers…
Toward an African Definition of Resilience
Resilience, or adaptive behavior in the face of adversity, has recently come to be understood as a phenomenon that should not be uniformly conceptualized across contexts and cultures. This emerging understanding has urged exploration of what resilience might mean in specific cultural contexts. As in other majority nation contexts, there is scant documentation of what resilience might mean in an African context. In this article, the authors report…
Youth Resilience and Culture
Meaning-making and resilience
Explanations of meaning-making generally prioritise intrapersonal processes. Although making meaning is an intrapersonal process, it is also strongly influenced by person-context interactions and cultural positioning. Nevertheless, the meaning-making literature has paid scant attention to how such interactivity and positioning shape meaning-making. In this article, we highlight the compound character of resilience-promoting meaning-making. To thi…
Education services and resilience processes
The resilience literature is increasingly drawing attention to formal service provision as a means for social ecologies to support children's and youths' positive adjustment to challenging life circumstances. This article interrogates the universality and simplicity of this argument. Using a secondary data analysis of the life stories of 16 resilient, Black South African students from impoverished families, we show that education services predomi…
Using video observation and photo elicitation interviews to understand obscured processes in the lives of youth resilience
Despite the increased effort to understand resilience processes in the lives of youth, the homogeneity of a largely westernized concept needs to be challenged in studies by incorporating meanings of resilience more relevant to youth around the globe. This requires a reconsideration of the methods used to study youth resilience. This article outlines the interactive dialogical process involved in visual elicitation methods that combine moving and …
Patterns of individual coping, engagement with social supports and use of formal services among a five-country sample of resilient youth
Differing amounts of formal resources in low-, middle- and high-income countries influence patterns of service use. Implications for better coordination between formal mental health services and social supports are discussed
Toward a Culturally and Contextually Sensitive Understanding of Resilience
Extant theories of resilience, or the process of adjusting well to adversity, privilege the voices of minority-world young people. Consequently, the resilience of marginalized, majority-world youth is imperfectly understood, and majority-world social ecologies struggle to facilitate resilience in ways that respect the insights of majority-world youth and their cultural and contextual positioning. Accordingly, this article makes audible, as it wer…
Psychology (66 works) · Resilience and Mental Health (62 works) · Psychological resilience (58 works) · Social Psychology (57 works) · Sociology (51 works) · Developmental psychology (33 works) · Social Psychology (30 works) · Political science (26 works) · Youth Development and Social Support (26 works) · Geography (22 works)