Risk Taking & Importance of Resilience for Adolescence

During teenager years its common to make mistakes from risk taking having either positive
or negative outcomes. Negative risk taking involves harm to one self and others while
positive risk taking refers to being beneficial to others and yourself. Today it seems a though
the major issues of negative risk taking originate from drugs, alcohol, violence and sexual
behaviour. From all of these negative risks I deem the key to avoiding them comes down to
having a positive social and emotional wellbeing, by being resilient to negative outcomes and
taking responsibility in addressing our own actions by making informed decisions.
From the first two weeks of this unit, I have learnt about the paramount importance of why
this High School PDHPE subject has a major impact on students lives. Two topics that stood
out were adolescent risk taking behaviour and the importance for resilience. Both these topics
I feel are fundamental as they help bring forth explanation of the adolescent personality and
mind both psychologically and physically. Overall this taught unit could assist teenagers
effectively progress through puberty and improve their mental health to possibly avoid
problems such as depression and anxiety.
I have learnt that resilience for adolescents is critical for social and emotional wellbeing. The
concept justifies the importance of teenagers being able to react positively to challenges and
setbacks in their lives, as I believe from previous experience that most teenagers are under
enormous stress from both school and parents expectations. For teenagers to be effectively
resilient, I feel that schools must provide them with activities acquiring them with valuable
life coping skills such as communication, problem solving, time management, and controlling
emotions. This acquired knowledge I have received, I consider being essential as it
demonstrates a solution of decreasing mental health issues among adolescents.
For this subject to be taught effectively I believe adolescents must understand their own brain
development. This may give teenagers a perspective of why underage drinking is discouraged
and an explanation of their behaviour and actions, due to the fact that their brain is
underdeveloped. I have learnt that the brain regions of the prefrontal cortex, frontal lobe and
limbic system are undeveloped causing for a reliance on the amygdala part of the brain being
the alternative for informational reasoning and processing, thus increasing impulsive
behaviour from gut instincts or feelings. From understanding adolescent brain development it
may help explain negative risk taking, poor judgement, failure to think effectively of their
consequences, as well as increased impulsive and emotional decision making amongst
adolescents.
Overall from this unit, I feel that during my time in high school there was a gap in my
knowledge in understanding positive risk taking and resilience, and I was fortunate enough to
avoid self harm from my own risk taking. An example of my personal experience of risk
taking occurred after finishing high school in 2012 during a post HSC celebration holiday at
Fiji. One night during this trip at a beach party I got myself into an uncomfortable situation as
a girl tried to take advantage of my drunken state through sexual behaviour. I was in no way
determined to engage with her sexually, but my alcoholic state caused me to struggle getting
out of the situation and I was fortunate enough to escape the situation from bringing up my
ex-girlfriend. From this experience I have learnt the dangers and risks involved with alcohol,
and Im inspired to teach adolescents of my experiences as a lesson to avoid negative risk
taking, and to instead endorse positive risk taking and resilience through their actions and
behaviour.