OpinionThe case for spiritual wellness in an age of anxious youth
Mental health requires the cultivation of an inner life: a capacity for meaning, connection and orientation in a shifting world
For most of my career in developmental and educational psychology, I have been guided by a single question: what do children truly need to flourish in the world they are entering? I don’t mean the world their parents inherited or the one textbooks were designed for, but the one unfolding – volatile, technology-saturated and deeply uncertain.
Eight years ago, during my PhD studies at the University of Cambridge, I was certain I was close to finding the answer; I immersed myself in building frameworks for computational thinking and complex problem-solving, convinced that these cognitive capacities formed the backbone of future readiness. Decompose problems. Recognise patterns. Reason algorithmically. If we sharpened young minds with these skills, surely we would prepare them for whatever the future might bring.
I held this belief until the data began to say otherwise.
It took me a while to pinpoint what was missing, but I’ve come to see it as this: spirituality.