The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic presents tremendous challenges to
child and adolescent health. It is expected that the COVID-19 crisis, including the
disease and prolonged social distancing, will have a major impact on youth well-being
[1–3]. It is easy to envision how COVID-19 will be the impetus for a host of lingering
negative outcomes. Schools are closed, businesses are shuttered, and families are
adjusting to 24/7 interaction, while caregivers simultaneously navigate parenting,
financial, and professional challenges and uncertainties. As Zhou and colleagues recently
reported in this journal [4], Chinese adolescents have experienced very high rates
of anxiety and depression during the COVID-19 outbreak. Risk is real and warrants
attention. And yet a sole focus on risk will miss resilience processes that can advance
science, services, education, and policy aimed at understanding how children and adolescents
respond to crisis. As such, we appreciate that Zhou and colleagues [4] also examined
factors that may reduce risk for psychological distress. As Masten [5] observed two
decades ago, “resilience does not come from rare or special qualities, but from the
everyday magic of the ordinary, normative human resources in… children, in their families
and relationships, and in their communities”. This ordinary magic in children, families,
and communities has a crucial role in the scientific and public health response to
COVID-19.
Over 50 years of research on resilience in children and adolescents implicate a range
of promotive and protective factors associated with adaptation in conditions of mass
adversity [6]. Resilience emerges from ordinary adaptive systems such as close relationships
with competent and caring adults and peers, effective schools and communities, opportunities
to succeed, and beliefs in the self. These core systems afford the capacity for self-regulation,
learning, problem-solving, motivation to adapt, persistence, and hope [5]. Families,
peers, schools, and communities all have a role in nurturing the growth, stability,
and recovery of these systems [7]. In the midst of a global pandemic, children and
adolescents depend on the resilience of these interdependent systems.
Some exposure and experience with challenges or adversity are important for developing
resilience processes and growing youths’ capacity and skills for handling stressful
experiences [6]. In response to COVID-19, individuals, families, communities, and
governments have joined together to mobilize capabilities, connect in new ways, and
discover new strengths. At the individual level, the crisis, home confinement, and
remote learning may provide opportunities for youth who often struggle in a traditional
school environment to succeed at an individualized pace of learning, facilitating
higher self-efficacy, perceived competence, and persistence. Stay-at-home orders may
afford youth more time to discover new passions, hobbies, or talents, such as experiences
with art, music, or nature, which can provide a greater sense of control and meaning
in their lives [8]. Intrinsic curiosity and an optimistic outlook may be especially
important for promoting resilience during the COVID-19 crisis [1]. Indeed, Chinese
adolescents reporting a more optimistic outlook for the COVID-19 crisis had lower
levels of anxiety and depression than their peers [4]. Within the family context,
increased proximity provides opportunities for promoting positive family relationships
[5] by engaging in collaborative activities (e.g., going on walks, doing puzzles/games,
eating meals together). Youth may even find themselves to be the household technology
expert as caregivers learn to navigate working remotely! COVID-19 has also led to
communities and schools supporting youth, families, and workers by delivering meals
to families, sewing facemasks, and facilitating neighborhood “birthday parades” with
police cars and fire trucks.
Although the COVID-19 crisis poses significant educational, social, and mental health
challenges for children and adolescents, some youth will evade these challenges entirely
or experience only certain ones. Just as we need to understand which youth experience
distress or difficulty during this pandemic, it is equally important to understand
which youth do well and why. Notably, some youth with pre-existing difficulties will
likely adapt positively [6]. For example, youth with significant anxiety may find
moderate anxiety related to COVID-19 drives protective behaviors (e.g., increased
compliance with hand-washing and physical distancing guidelines) that in turn further
reduce anxiety [9]. Potentially in line with this possibility, Zhou and colleagues
found that knowledge about the COVID-19 crisis and associated prevention/control measures
may be important for mitigating psychological risk, including both anxiety and depressive
symptoms [4]. Youth who have received cognitive/behavioral treatment may also be better
prepared for dealing with COVID-19-related anxieties through learned strategies (e.g.,
deep breathing; challenging catastrophic thinking). Some youth who experience peer
victimization likely find time away from school allows for greater concentration on
academics, in addition to improved one-on-one interactions with peers and family,
and unexpected social connections (e.g., with neighbors or distant relatives). Youth
with attention and behavior challenges may find that flexibility in remote learning
provides dynamic opportunities to engage with curriculum by personalizing tasks to
their interests or learning style and engaging in new activities that help focus attention
(e.g., breaking up tasks, listening to music/white noise) that are less feasible in
typical school environments. Recognizing this heterogeneity has fueled interest in
identifying potential promotive and protective mechanisms that contribute to resilient
outcomes, especially among young with mental health concerns [5, 10]. It is crucial
to examine why some youth do surprisingly well, why some youth fare well in some domains
but not others, and what facilitates long-term adaptation.
Longitudinal, developmentally informed research provides unique opportunities to capture
both risk and resilience mechanisms among children, adolescents, and families. This
is necessary to facilitate improved understanding of specific adaptive processes in
response to COVID-19, particularly as stay at home regulations relax and communities
and schools begin to re-open. It is critical to examine adaptation in both the short
term and the long term, attending to factors that promote well-being over time and
during key periods of acute and sustained stressors. Efforts to support youths’ well-being
during this pandemic and future crises can be improved by identifying adaptive coping
and resilience-promoting processes that can inspire novel strategies to promote child
and adolescent health and well-being (e.g., school-wide wellness supports). Families,
schools, and communities can generate robust capacity to overcome adversity when they
coordinate efforts and collaborate across levels [3]. This task may sound ordinary,
but it can also be magical.