Let’s Talk about Resilience: An Analysis of Factors Contributing to the Declining Resilience in Today’s Generation of Hong Kong Adolescents

Abstract

Suicide is the leading cause of death amongst today’s adolescents in Hong Kong. A young person under the age of 24 commits suicide every 9.3 days. And for every death, 50 attempts are made. This cohort’s mental health is also deteriorating, with increasing proportions of the population displaying symptoms of depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and other disorders. Given that resilience is an important protective factor for suicidal behaviors and mental health illnesses, this thesis therefore uses the rising trends of suicide and mental health problems in Hong Kong as indicators that there exists declining resilience amongst its current generation of adolescents.

In this thesis, I explore how Hong Kong adolescents’ resilience has changed over time. Specifically, I compare the resilience of this current generation of adolescents to that of their parents’ generation, Generation X (1965-1980), to see if any changes might lend a hand in explaining the lack of resilience in Hong Kong youth today. In particular, I utilized a published framework of resilience to study three factors of resilience: intellectual functioning, social competence, and parental relationships. To conduct my research, I relied on data from local and global studies, the Hong Kong government databases, and interviews with two Hong Kong government figures.

Ultimately, I found that while intellectual functioning of Hong Kong adolescents has remained relatively stable since 1980, social competence and parental relationships have indeed changed remarkably for the worse in terms of affecting adolescents’ resilience. In particular, this thesis revealed that changes in bullying, moral character, empathy, family structure, and household composition in Hong Kong as reasons behind today’s adolescents’ deteriorating resilience levels. This thesis then connects these changes within the two factors of social competence and parental relationships to the home and school environments, and considers how policymakers might implement appropriate reforms at the family and school levels so to strengthen the resilience of Hong Kong adolescents.