Youth and Adversity

Book excerpt: This book offers the most current research and reviews, innovative programs and approaches, developments and directions, and future outlooks and trends from an international perspective by experts in the field on a variety of current topics related to youth facing adversity with implications for creating and maintaining child and adolescent resilience in a constantly changing world. In these chapters are themes and information that embody the stories of the lives of youth today. Topics include the following: parenting, coping, and motivation of Australian at-risk adolescents; religious rejection and resilience among Christian sexual minority youth; the influences from parents, police, and social work on at-risk youth in Hong Kong; resilience among Native American youth; the experience of Australian children who have been diagnosed and treated for pediatric hematology; the effect in adulthood with Serbian youth who grew up in political and economic turmoil; approaches for overcoming adversity among Arab American youth; EcoWellness as a way to connect with at-risk youth using nature as a basis for overcoming adversity; adolescents and gaming; poly-victimization and resilience among Spanish youth; a Liberation psychology approach to working with borderland Mexican children impacted by violence on the U.S.-Mexico border; substance use and resilience among adolescents; use of the Home Interaction Programme for Parents and Youngsters (HIPPY) as way for enhancing parenting practices to mitigate socioeconomic disadvantages faced by at-risk youth in New Zealand; use of rite of passage programs, specifically, the Louis Armstrong Manhood Development Program (LAMDP), as a way to address the overrepresentation of African American boys in special education; psychosocial factors involved in adolescent self-injury; and nurturing hope and resilience among at-risk middle school youth using a group rap therapy program called Wrapped in Resilience. All chapters provide a better understanding of various areas in which youth face adversity, and offer implications for ways of helping youth develop resilience and positive coping skills. Building upon the knowledge, awareness, and skills that are explored in this text, helping professionals, researchers, and educators who work with youth begin to better understand and more effectively intervene with the lived experience of youth who face adversity in many different forms today, and who survive these experiences in a way that makes them stronger and more resilient