Felicia Low: Informed Futures Research Author on the concerns over young New Zealander's ability to handle adversity

There are concerns over young New Zealanders' ability to handle adversity. 

New figures show more than 21% of 15 to 24 year olds face psychological struggles. 

It's prompted calls for more to be done to build resilience in children, starting at early childhood centres through to high schools. 

Dr Felicia Low is behind the report and told Mike Hosking the numbers are deeply troubling. 

She says we know young people aren't doing well, and we have to act on it. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
An insight in the fragility of our young people. One
in five of our fifteen to twenty four year olds
are experiencing what they call high psychological stress. This comes
from the work of Sir Peter Gluckman's think tank. They
tell us children need to build better resilience. So I
suppose the question, or one of the questions, is how
do we do that? Doctor Felicia Lowe, is whether us
or all of this Felicia.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Good morning to you, Good morning mine.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
The twenty percent is interesting because that I suppose, if
you want to be positive, glass half full means eighty
percent don't suffer high psychological stress. So is that good
or bad? Or we don't know?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Is twenty percent too many? I mean it's one in five,
and you know that could easily be your own child,
or you know, your your nephew or niece, or you know,
your good friend's child. You know, we want every single
young person in New Zealand to be able to, you know,
feel mentally positive and to be able to thrive in life.
And if they're not feeling if they're feeling distressed all

(00:53):
the time, then it's going to really impact how they
can function and live their lives.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
What is high psychological stress? And how do you measure it?

Speaker 2 (01:02):
So it's basically in this case, I think the survey
was about the self report of you know, various measures.
There are tests that are available that have lots of
different questions and then you might answer, you know, yes
or no, all right, how you know strongly you agree
or disagree with them, and you know, you come up
with the score. And generally when you exceed a certain score.

(01:23):
That's how we distinguish whether someone is distressed or not.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Is it getting worse? Do we know if it's getting
worse or not? I mean that the rhetoric would indicate
it's been never been harder to be a young person.
Is that true?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yes, yes, it is. What we have noticed is not
just that young New Zealanders are not doing well, but
it's been getting worse over the last you know, several
years or past decade. And yeah, a big reason for
this is that the world Lion is very different from
the world that you and I grew up in. And

(02:00):
you know, we've got things like, you know, the aftermath
of a global endem it, we've got climate change anxieties,
we've got the impacts of social media so it's a
really different world that young people are growing up in
the exposed to all these different challenges that we have,
and it's not a surprise.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Really, this is not true to say though every generation
grows up in a different world, and every generation has
said since time memorial, we'll tell you what we're growing
up in a different world from when you and I
grew up.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yes, I mean, I can understand that perspective. But these
are some very, very very different issues that young people
are facing. And it doesn't matter I guess whether it's
different or you know, worse or better or whatever than
previous generations. The issue is that we know that young
people are not doing well and we have to do

(02:48):
something to help them well.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Well. Being a parent of five, so I've got some experience,
and most of them, as it turns out, in fact,
all of them turn out to be in the fifteen
to twenty four bracket. I can tell you as a parent,
their attitude to life, their outlook on life, how life
affects them is different for each individual person, despite the
fact they've been raised and broadly speaking the same way.

(03:13):
So that would indicate to me it's genetic as opposed
to societal I.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Wouldn't say, I mean there are some aspects of personalities
that are innate for sure, And yes, I mean there
are many parents that can have anecdotes about how one
child is completely the opposite from you know, another child,
despite being raised in the same environment. But we're looking
at a whole, like the population as a whole, and
I know it's easy to pick up examples where you

(03:39):
know there are these sort of unusual differences within a family.
But as a whole, we know young people are people
are not doing well, and we know that there are
some ways that we can do to help them, and
that's what we should be focusing on.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
And who should be doing that is that school? Is
that parents? Who is this all of us?

Speaker 2 (03:57):
So when I say we should be helping them, that
includes parents in care githers, the schools or education system,
as well as you know, policy makers who might develop
policies that can more broadly support parents and schools and
the communities to help our young children.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Nice to talk to you, Felicia Felicia Looe, who's out
of the Quoitu Center for Informed Futures. That's Sir Peter
Gluckman's very good.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Work for more from the Mic Asking Breakfast.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
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