This week, young people from around the world are gathering at the United Nations headquarters in New York for the ECOSOC Youth Forum 2026. Running from 14 to 16 April 2026, the Forum brings together youth leaders, policymakers, and civil society representatives to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. On the final day, there is a dedicated session on youth mental health and wellbeing as a foundation for sustainable development and and a direct call to strengthen youth resilience programs across the globe.

The timing is significant. It reflects a growing recognition at the highest international levels that building resilience in young people is not a soft topic sitting at the edge of global development policy. It is central to it.

The Dalgarno Institute‘s recently published paper, Building Resilience in Young People: Mental Health Prevention That Works, draws on the World Youth Report 2025 and consultations with nearly 3,000 young people across 137 countries. Its findings are sobering. One in seven young people aged 10 to 19 is currently living with a mental health condition. Forty-three per cent of youth surveyed globally rate their own mental health as poor or fair. And three in four adult mental health conditions were already present by the mid-twenties, meaning the decisions made during adolescence shape outcomes that last a lifetime.

This is the evidence base that should be shaping youth resilience programs at every level. And it demands a serious response.

What Our Research Paper Found

personality trait. The environments young people inhabit, the relationships available to them, the economic conditions their families face, and the values and meaning systems that anchor their decision-making all build it, or break it.

The data from the World Youth Report 2025 tells a revealing story about daily life for young people globally. Almost 40 per cent of those surveyed reported having family members who struggle with emotional regulation, mental health disorders, or problematic substance use. Thirty per cent said they never talked about their feelings with a parent or carer. Thirty-eight per cent rarely or never woke feeling rested. Forty-four per cent were in regular contact with people they identified as detrimental to their wellbeing.

These are not isolated statistics. They describe the texture of everyday life for millions of young people navigating adolescence without adequate scaffolding.

The paper also documents a critical and underappreciated link: the relationship between substance use and mental health runs in both directions. Mental health difficulties can lead young people toward substance use as a coping mechanism, and substance use can trigger or substantially worsen underlying conditions. With the adolescent brain continuing to develop into the late twenties, early exposure to substances carries a disproportionate risk of lasting impact on brain function and emotional regulation. This cycle, if left unaddressed during adolescence, follows young people into adulthood.

The paper is unequivocal on this point: building resilience in young people requires addressing root causes, not merely managing downstream consequences.

The Five Pillars Every Youth Resilience Program Must Address

Our paper identifies five interconnected social determinants of youth resilience that any serious prevention approach must address: education, employment, family and relationships, economic security, and meaning and values.

That final pillar deserves particular emphasis. Sustainable, evidence-based value systems permeate all strong cultural and community structures. When best practice is absent, a lesser system fills the gap, and young people will naturally gravitate toward the loudest voice available to them. Building resilience in young people must therefore include offering them something worth anchoring to, a coherent sense of purpose, identity, and direction.

Schools have a pivotal role to play. Effective youth resilience programs in schools integrate social-emotional learning alongside substance use prevention, and they draw in parents, guardians, and peer groups as active participants, not peripheral observers. A study of nearly 1,500 schools across ten European countries, cited in our paper, found that over 40 per cent lacked a dedicated space for mental health support. The gap between what is needed and what currently exists remains vast.

Only 40 per cent of surveyed young people had ever consulted a health professional about their emotional wellbeing. The barriers they cited included fear of not being taken seriously, fear of burdening others, and a basic absence of trust in the systems around them. Adolescence is the critical window. If we miss it, the costs, individual, familial, economic, and social, compound over time.

Our Response: A New Initiative in Development

The evidence demands action. In response, the Dalgarno Institute is currently developing an international youth resilience council as a World Resiliency Day initiative, bringing together young people across communities to lead real, locally grounded advocacy for youth resilience. The vision is for young people to be co-contributors to this movement, not passive recipients of a programme.

A formal announcement is planned later this year. Watch this space.

The United Nations Connection

The ECOSOC Youth Forum is co-convened by the Major Group for Children and Youth and the International Coordination Meeting of Youth Organisations, and exists precisely to strengthen the voice of young people in shaping global policy. Its 2026 sessions cover sustainable cities, clean energy, industry and innovation, and SDG 17 on partnerships, all of which connect directly to the structural conditions young people need to build genuine resilience. The Forum also feeds into the UN Water Conference 2026, the SDG Summit 2027, and the HABITAT Assembly 2027, meaning its impact extends well beyond this week.

As the Dalgarno Institute develops its international youth resilience initiative, alignment with this global framework is central to the vision. Young Australians and their international peers deserve a seat at this table.

A Call to Action

The ECOSOC Youth Forum 2026 opens this week with a clear message: young people are not simply the beneficiaries of sustainable development policy. They are its architects.

Our Building Resilience in Young People paper provides the evidence base. The international youth resilience initiative currently in development at the Dalgarno Institute is our response to that evidence. Together, they represent a commitment to youth resilience programs that take both the research and the next generation seriously.

If you work with young people in education, faith communities, sport, or community organisations, we invite you to get in touch. Something significant is coming.

The evidence on building resilience in young people is in. The question now is whether we are willing to act on it.

For more information about World Resiliency Day and the Dalgarno Institute, visit dalgarnoinstitute.org.au