Cognitive and emotional development of young people and the development of resilience

We stress throughout this book the need to be aware of the developmental stage of children and young people as a way of informing how we interact with them. This chapter, by Laurence Baldwin, serves as a brief introduction to the complex theories of child and adolescent development and will highlight the key points for informing nursing practice. It is necessarily brief, but will give pointers to more in-depth texts and sources of information for follow-up study, and tries to provide a steer for key concepts in a potentially difficult area. In order to do this we need to look at classic theories of both physical and cognitive development, and also some other concepts that inform certain areas of engaging young people. Identity formation, for example, is crucial stage of adolescent development which impacts on mental health, so it merits a section of its own, alongside some of the newer thinking about how resilience develops and is potentially very different and individualized. We will also touch on the recent understandings of how early trauma impacts on development and mental health, particularly the concept of ‘Adverse Childhood Events’ (ACEs).