Resourceful Adolescent Programs
The Resourceful Adolescent Program (RAP) is an evidence-based program developed at the Queensland University of Technology to build resilience and promote positive mental health in teenagers. The program specifically aims to prevent teenage depression and related difficulties.
Approximately one in five teenagers will develop depression during the course of their teenage years which could severely hamper their development and future prospects.
RAP aims to increase the psychological resilience or resourcefulness of young people and draws on research of successful treatments for adolescent depression and the known psychosocial risk and protective factors at the individual, family and school level.
The Resourceful Adolescent Program consists of three components that promote the individual, family and school protective factors respectively:
- RAP-A for adolescents – school-based program for 12 to 15 year olds that aims to improve the coping skills of teenagers
- RAP-P for parents – targets family protective factors such as increasing harmony and preventing conflict
- RAP-T for teachers – aims at assisting teachers to promote school connectedness, a protective factor that has recently been shown to be very important in teenage mental health
The three components of the Resourceful Adolescent Programs are primarily run as universal prevention programs. They are designed to be useful to all teenagers, and not only those specifically at risk for depression. The programs aim to prevent the development of future problems by promoting a range of protective factors. The three components of the program can be run independently or together.
Guidestar will be running RAP-A and RAP-P in term 4 and will be including RAP-T in 2027.
