AUTHOR=Theron Linda , Bergamini Matteo , Chambers Cassey , Choi Karmel , Fawole Olufunmilayo I. , Fyneface Fyneface Dumnamene , Höltge Jan , Kapwata Thandi , Levine Diane T. , Mai Bornu Zainab , Makape Makananelo , Matross Celeste , McGrath Brian , Olaniyan Olanrewaju , Stekel Dov J. , Hey Josh Vande , Wright Caradee Y. , Zion Ameh Abba , Ungar Michael 

TITLE=Multisystemic resilience and its impact on youth mental health: reflections on co-designing a multi-disciplinary, participatory study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

VOLUME=Volume 4 - 2025

YEAR=2025

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/child-and-adolescent-psychiatry/articles/10.3389/frcha.2025.1489950

DOI=10.3389/frcha.2025.1489950

ISSN=2813-4540

ABSTRACT=Youth depression is a global emergency. Redressing this emergency requires a sophisticated understanding of the multisystemic risks and biopsychosocial, economic, and environmental resources associated with young people's experiences of no/limited versus severe depression. Too often, however, personal risks and a focus on individual-level protective resources dominate accounts of young people's trajectories towards depression. Further, studies of depression in high-income countries (i.e., “western”) typically inform these accounts. This article corrects these oversights. It reports on the methodology of the Wellcome-funded R-NEET study: a multidisciplinary, multisystemic, mixed method longitudinal study of resilience among African youth whose status as “not in education, employment or training” (NEET) makes them disproportionately vulnerable to depression. Co-designed by academics, community-based service providers and youth in South Africa and Nigeria, with partnerships in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, the R-NEET study is identifying the physiological, psychological, social, economic, institutional, and environmental risks and resources associated with distinct trajectories of depression. Using the methodology of the R-NEET study as exemplar, this article advances an argument for understanding resilience as a contextually and culturally rooted capacity that draws on the multiple, co-occurring systems that young people depend upon to support their wellbeing. Acknowledging and harnessing the multiple systems implicated in resilience is critical to researchers and mental health providers who seek to support young people to thrive, and to young people themselves when protecting or promoting their mental wellbeing.