Youth Empowered Solutions! – A Developmental Approach to Mental Health Interventions
Youth Empowered Solutions (YES)! is based on an understanding of typical maturational processes.
There is an interrelationship between the developmental tasks people experience in childhood and adolescence and life skills that contribute to mental health and the ability to function independently.
Eric Erikson (a pioneer in developmental theory) and others have shown that developmental tasks function as components of mental health.
Many people are familiar with Erickson’s stages of development, but simply as descriptions of how core capabilities are developed. Initially, Erickson simply used these terms to describe the process of moving from dependency to being able to interact effectively with those around us and the external world.
In his later work, Erikson described these same capabilities as components of mental health. While that terminology has not “caught on” generally, research has subsequently connected these tasks with strengths and outcomes that influence not only how well we function, but also our sense of who we are.
For a variety of reasons, some young people do not develop the skills and developmental capacity to function effectively. Instead, many of them experience serious mental health and substance use conditions.
YES! is a model that guides young people through experiences that intentionally support the developmental capacity and skill development needed to transition into adulthood–including a focus on identifying adult goals and roles to give meaning to their lives.
Two aspects of development contribute to the YES! model–understanding developmental tasks/components of mental health that support a successful adulthood and the extent of information and skill sets that support the maturation into adulthood.
- Developmental Tasks as Contributors to Mental Health
| Developmental Tasks/ Components of Mental Health | Related Strengths | Favorable Outcomes |
| Trust – Learning to rely on other key people | Hope | Faith in others and future events |
| Autonomy – Learning it’s okay to be who one is | Will | Sense of self-control and adequacy |
| Initiative – Learning it’s okay to take action; impact or change things | Sense of Purpose | Ability to self-start, initiate activities |
| Industry – Learning one can make it; can succeed; can do well | Competence | Ability to learn how things work; get things done |
| Identity – Learning who one is; seeing one’s ideal possible self | Fidelity to Self | Seeing oneself as a unique person with a self-affirming role or task. |
2. Information and Skill Sets that Contribute to Maturation into Adulthood
Just as young people look at their elders in disbelief when they ask for help with technology challenges, the things that “trip up” young people are sometimes a surprise to older people. Young people often unaware of information needed to navigate through tasks. For example, they might not think to consider timeframes needed to accomplish a task, supplies that might be required, whether an appointment is necessary, or the potential impact of their appearance or attitudes on their success in engaging potential employers or service providers. It might not occur to them to use please, thank you, and “I’m sorry for causing you extra work” when seeking help at places like the DMV. If they do have such social skills, they might not recognize to use this strength.
Learning about the informational gaps that contribute to the frustration of young people is often best done by participating with them in activities to address their challenge. One learns not only about their specific reservoir of knowledge, but also about their learning styles, ability to handle ambiguity, and disappointments. The discussions surrounding these shared experiences become foundations for longer term work on addressing the challenges that young people faced.
Specific assessment of skills that support executive functioning is often omitted when young people enter mental health or substance use treatment programs. Yet these are the cognitive skills needed to regulate behavior, make decisions, and to set and achieve goals. Examples of such include the array of cognitive skills needed for emotional control, persistence, time management, stress tolerance, etc. Such skills are typically learned in a very rudimentary form early in life and fine-tuned during adolescence and adulthood.
Executive skills do not typically occur spontaneously, even for young people without histories of trauma or other life disruptions. They typically develop in response to guidance provided by healthy adults or peers when a young person is grappling with a complex task. Ongoing tips and encouragement enable a healthy young person to build executive skills in bits and pieces.
However, when a young person lacks trust that others can help them, or does not believe that they can be successful in efforts to change their lives, that young person is often unable to easily apply the tips and encouragement that are helpful to “typically developing” young people who have not experienced major life disruptions.
The successes that young people experience in addressing their early goals or life challenges typically give them the confidence to move from a focus on immediate needs to a sense that, with support, they can develop skills necessary for creating a future that has meaning for them.
For the sake of simplicity, the discussion above provides a quick synopsis of a focus on developmental factors that can be addressed within a mental health framework. The intent is raise the alternative of a focus on building skills and a sense of self that focus on the future, rather than focusing on symptom alleviation. That is not to say that experiencing early trauma or what might be early signs of psychosis are ignored. They are, however, addressed in terms of their effects on the young person’s path to becoming the person they want to be and understanding the impact those experiences have had on their developmental process.
Trauma – Understanding it leads to healing for young adults.
Hear from young people how adverse childhood experiences pushed them to cover up the hurt in unhealthy ways and how YES! Helped their recovery.
Walker, J. S. (2015). A Theory of Change for Positive Developmental Approaches to Improving Outcomes Among Emerging Adults with Serious Mental Health Conditions. The journal of behavioral health services & research, 42(2), 131–149.