Abstract:
INTRODUCTION : Adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are exposed to several
challenges and risk factors, linked to historical legacies. Sub-Saharan Africa has
one of the highest rates of poverty and inequality in the world, is one of the
regions most negatively affected by climate change, performs poorly on many
health measures, and has high rates of different forms of violence, especially
gender-based violence. These contextual challenges impact adolescent mental
health outcomes, preventing them to access resilience-enabling pathways that
support positive outcomes despite adversity. This study aimed to contribute to
knowledge generation on resilience of young people in the understudied SSA
region by investigating which variables directly (or indirectly) affect the resilience
of adolescents.
METHODS : Purposive sampling was used to collect quantitative survey data from
3,312 adolescents (females = 1,818; males = 1,494) between the ages of 12
and 20 years, participating in interventions implemented by a non-governmental
organization, the Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative. Data were collected
in Angola (385, 11.6%), Eswatini (128, 3.9%), Kenya (390, 11.8%), Lesotho (349,
10.5%), Mozambique (478, 14.4%), Namibia (296, 8.9%), South Africa (771, 23.3%),
Uganda (201, 6.1%), and Zambia (314, 9.5%). The survey collected data on
socio-demographic status, resilience (CYRM-R), depression (PHQ-9), self-esteem
(Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale) and feelings of safety (self-developed scale).
Mental health was defined as lower levels of depression, higher levels of selfesteem
and higher levels of feeling safe. A mediation analysis was conducted
to investigate the relationship between the predictors (the socio-demographic
variables) and the output (resilience), with the mediators being depression,
self-esteem and feeling safe (which all link to mental health).
RESULTS : This study contributes to a gap in knowledge on country-level
comparative evidence on significant predictors that impact resilience outcomes
(directly or indirectly) for adolescents in sub-Saharan African countries. The
results indicate that, when considering all countries collectively, feeling safe
is the only predictor that has a significant direct effect on overall resilience
and personal resilience, but not on caregiver resilience. When considering each
country separately, feeling safe has a direct effect on overall, personal and
caregiver resilience for all countries; but not for South Africa and Mozambique.
DISCUSSION : The results provide evidence on which to craft youth development
interventions by measuring mediators (depression, self-esteem and feeling safe) and resilience for adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa. The overall results of
the present paper point toward a contextually relevant pathway to supporting
their resilience, namely, the need to systemically target the creation and/or
strengthening of structures that enable adolescents to feel safe.
