7.A. Scientific session: Resilience, mental health and well-being – pathways to Public Mental Health

Abstract In a period of time marked by emerging crises, understanding resilience mechanisms and how people cope with difficult situations has become crucial for advancing public mental health. Resilience, defined as the ability to bounce back from adverse life events, has emerged as a key concept in mental health research. By identifying these mechanisms and factors, we can recognise emerging risk and protective factors for mental health outcomes at the individual, community, societal, and environmental levels. This workshop presents recent empirical findings on resilience across diverse national contexts and populations, including those living in vulnerable situations. The first presentation uses population-based data from a rural area in Germany to focus on resilience and life events in rural communities. It describes the role of potentially traumatic life events in relation to resilience and mental health outcomes. Different types of life events, e.g. war/conflict-related life events, and their associations with resilience and mental health are discussed. The second presentation examines the relationships between resilience, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and alexithymia among imprisoned youth, an understudied population living in vulnerable situations. Data from young prisoners are compared with data of young people in the general population. Resilience factors in the imprisoned population are examined. The third presentation examines the associations between experiences of disability in the early life stage and ageing trajectories, perceptions and resilience. The impact of early-life disability on late-life experiences is analysed using data from the Health and Retirement Study. The fourth presentation focuses on the coping strategies and their associations with mental health outcomes as part of mental health and well-being promotion. Utilizing data from an umbrella review, a new coping scale has been developed and validated in two samples from Germany. This workshop highlights resilience as a crucial public mental health element and offer insights into risk and protective factors for resilience from diverse countries and contexts. Key messages • Understanding resilience and coping mechanisms is vital to advancing public mental health during times of crisis and adversity. • Identifying resilience factors across diverse populations reveals new opportunities to strengthen mental health and well-being globally.