“Don’t you dare call me resilient!” These heated words, expressed by a young woman who is not in employment, education or training (NEET), point to a growing resistance to ‘resilience’ among youth with high levels of experience of vulnerability. And with good reason.
For too long, society has expected young people facing atypical levels of stress to be psychologically rugged.
Being psychologically rugged means having the personal strength or individual grit to soldier on, keep smiling, and remain mentally healthy when society lets you down. But, in reality, what this means is that so long as youth demonstrate psychological ruggedness, society can continue to let them down.
And society has let NEETs down – badly. In South Africa, at least 1 in 3 young people (aged 15–24) is NEET. Most of these young people are NEET because of structural barriers and systemic failures.
Deprived of opportunities to be economically independent or advance their education, NEETs are vulnerable to intersecting risks, including mental illness (especially depression), poor health, poverty, and fragmented social ties.
Still, many young people in the ongoing Resilient NEETs (R-NEET) study report feelings of well-being. But their “well-being” cannot be attributed solely to psychological ruggedness.
Since April 2025, the R-NEET study has been following a cohort of South African and Nigerian youth – all of whom have lived experience of being NEET – and their related challenges.
Using multiple methods, the study is repeatedly investigating what types of support help NEETs to experience better mental health. Specifically, it asks: “What combination of supports enables NEETs to report no or minimal symptoms of depression at a point in time and over time?”
Study participants do report personal strengths. Despite the many deprivations they face, they remain stubbornly hopeful that life will still give them a chance. They are self-compassionate. They experience gratitude. They give back to their family and community.
However, as in previous qualitative resilience studies involving NEETs and other resilience studies with South African youth with elevated exposure to hardship, these personal strengths are accompanied by other forms of support.
They keep company with a supportive social network, opportunities to hustle, spaces and places to keep busy or forget about the pressures of being NEET, and cultural heritage (like comforting beliefs and a community that actively cares).
Mentally healthy NEETs have families that continue to care; peers that refuse to give up on them; opportunities to develop new skills, bolster their CVs, and gain a sense of purpose; spaces and places to de-stress and relax; and faith-based and other communities that welcome (rather than judge) them. In other words, being NEET and not depressed is rooted in an enabling ecosystem, not just in being a resilient individual.
Multisystemic explanations of resilience show that ecosystems that enable resilience provide access to meaningful social connections – often caring family, supportive peers, or encouraging neighbours; relevant and accessible institutional support, including youth-friendly mental health services; and welcoming spaces and places in the built and natural environment that afford young people safe opportunities to relax, exercise, and dream.
These ecosystems facilitate the conditions that make mental health possible. In short, understood multisystemically, health and wellness are possible because of enabling interactions between individuals and the systems they are connected to.
For example, a South African study of youth resilience to depression over time showed that mental health resilience was strongest among young people who were better resourced. This did not mean they came from privileged families or communities.
Instead, even though they lived lives of precarity, their mental health was protected by a multisystemic mix of supports that combined personal, social, institutional, cultural, and physical-environment resources. In contrast, young people who reported worsening or chronic high symptoms of depression mostly reported only personal strengths.
Even so, too often researchers and mental health practitioners prioritise individual strengths when they investigate the determinants of mental health or design mental health interventions. For instance, a systematic review of 142 studies examining the factors that supported young adults across the world in reporting no or limited symptoms of depression when they faced atypically high levels of stress showed that almost half of the included studies reported personal strengths like grit, self-esteem, or positive thoughts.
Focusing on the individual not only flies in the face of multisystemic resilience science, it also makes resilience trite. Worse, individual-focused understandings of resilience harm young people with the highest experiences of vulnerability, including NEETs, because they make young people solely responsible for their mental health.
Understanding that different types of support and resources from the systems surrounding young people are as important – if not more important – than strengths within young people shifts the responsibility for mental health from young people to the systems they are connected to.
Championing mental health
World Mental Health Day 2026 urges respect for the expertise of people with lived experiences of hardship and related mental health challenges. Mentally healthy NEETs want society to do more than hear them when they say that labelling them “resilient” is patronising and punitive. Rather, we need to act on their expertise and create the social, structural, and physical conditions that make resilience possible.
The families who continue to encourage young people who are NEET, the communities that take action to ensure NEETs belong and have spaces to keep constructively busy, the policies that remove barriers rather than enforce them – these and other everyday supports are the building blocks of youth mental health resilience.
Leveraging these everyday supports is a first step to moving beyond the ‘DIY myth’ of youth mental health and creating a world in which it will not be necessary to glorify psychological ruggedness.
* Professor Linda Theron of the Department of Educational Psychology, University of Pretoria is an HPCSA-registered educational and research psychologist and the principal investigator in an ongoing study on resilience among young people who are not in employment, education or training (NEET). The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Pretoria or the National Media Group.
