Resilience of young adults living with mental disorders in the City of Tshwane, South Africa

Abstract

Background: The challenges that young adults encounter today present greater risks to their mental wellbeing compared to those experienced by previous generations. For those young adults living with mental health disorders, they suffer even more when having to deal with its burdens. Many of these young adults face floods of negative and powerful emotions, discrimination and isolation; however, they are likely to cope well with these difficult situations if they are resilient.

Aim: This study purported to report on resilience among young adults living with mental disorders in the City of Tshwane.

Setting: The study was conducted in Atteridgeville in the City of Tshwane, Gauteng province in South Africa.

Methods: A qualitative exploratory and descriptive research was conducted among 10 purposefully sampled young adults aged between 18 years and 34 years old. Data were collected using individual, semi-structured interviews in primary healthcare clinics and analysed using Tesch’s method.

Results: Two themes, namely, harnessing purpose in building resilience and confidence enhances positive interactions along with four related sub-themes emerged from the results. The themes indicated how a sense of purposefulness and confidence help young adults living with mental health disorders build resilience.

Conclusion: For young adults to be resilient, approaches such as psychotherapy for treating mental health issues need to incorporate strategies to develop a sense of purpose and confidence.

Contribution: This study elucidated the role of purposefulness and confidence in building resilience, and further provided some suggestions on strategies that could be used to build resilience in conjunction with medical management of mental health disorders among young adults.