(Photo from Unsplash)

The University of the Philippines (UP) hosted a webinar on Friday, July 14 where medical experts explained the concept of resilience and its importance in the lives of young people. In partnership with the National Telehealth Center (NTHC), the webinar entitled "Kaya Mo, Kaya Ko, Kaya Natin Ito: Resilience Among Young People" discussed an in-depth understanding of the challenges young people face to equip them with practical strategies to support their resilience.
(Photo courtesy of UP)

Dr. Cynthia Leynes, Professor Emeritus from UP Philippine General Hospital (PGH) in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine (DPBM), said when young people are facing challenges, they are more likely to do dangerous things, skip school and underestimate the importance of building and keeping a relationship. Leynes explained that it is essential to “build a sense of resilience” among youth during their learning processes so that these difficulties are dealt with in a good way. "To build resilience, you have to look at the little things in life that bring you happiness because looking at them helps you change your mindset about your life,” Leynes said. To increase resilience, she noted that young people should also cultivate positive emotions and find ways to move forward, "Concentrate on what you must do now, do not worry about what's to come,” Lyenes said. “Most resilient people have a passion they are keen about, which helps them deal with everyday situations,” she added. Meanwhile, Dr. Norieta Balderrama, an Associate Professor and one of the speakers from UP in the DPBM, also presented resilience's developmental and building blocks. She noted that resilient people see themselves as safe, capable, and lovable. "Every child and young individual we see in some way, on a different level, is resilient, physically present, emotionally shut down, minimizes access to emotional experience but just on a different level,” Balderrama explained. "Teaching strategies of self-care, goal planning, and comprehending problems can only make them better individuals and better equip them with practical strategies to boost their resilience," she added. Balderrama emphasized that the key to resilient living involves the importance of connections which is the function of relationships of having to talk to someone about their feelings as a factor for support and resources. "In the face of difficulty, those individuals should plan to visualize success, boost their self-esteem, enhance their self-efficacy, and learn to manage stress by improving decision making, and learn to ask for help, and learn to be yourself," she added. Other factors that hinder individuals' resilience, such as adverse childhood experiences and their effects on the brain, physical ailments, and mental health issues, were also discussed throughout the webinar. Regular facilitators like international public health expert Dr. Susan Pineda-Mercado and UP NTHC Director Raymond Francis Sarmiento were also present during the webinar.

(Rhowen Del Rosario)