# Current evidence and future directions for social and societal resilience factors in response to societal challenges and crises: an overview of systematic reviews and expert rating

## TL;DR

The paper reviews evidence on social and societal factors that help communities respond to crises, highlighting the importance of support systems and policies for mental health resilience.

## Contribution

This study provides a systematic overview of social and societal resilience factors, emphasizing gaps in current research and the need for systemic approaches.

## Key findings

- Strong evidence supports social support, relationship quality, and family support as resilience factors.
- Societal factors like housing and mental health access are linked to resilience, though evidence is limited.
- Experts rated social factors as slightly more important than societal ones for resilience outcomes.

## Abstract

Resilient outcomes are the most common response to societal crises. Resilience factors represent multilevel psychosocial resources that increase the likelihood of resilient responses. While resilience research has predominantly focused on individual factors, social and societal factors have received less attention. This overview of systematic reviews aimed to identify and summarize evidence on social and societal resilience factors linked to mental health responses during societal challenges in high-income countries. Systematic reviews exploring these associations were identified through searches in three databases up to June 12, 2023. Resilience factors were classified as having favorable, unfavorable, mixed, or non-significant associations with mental health outcomes. Quality appraisal used an adapted AMSTAR-2-tool. Twenty reviews (samples: 2,402–489,419) reported on stressors like pandemics, minority stress, and migration. At the social level, stronger evidence supports the favorable effects of social support, relationship quality, and family support. Societal factors like adequate housing, access to mental health services, and supportive policies were linked to resilience outcomes, though evidence remains sparse or heterogenous for many factors. An expert survey rated social factors as slightly more important than societal ones. Expanding resilience research to include families, workplaces, and societal factors in longitudinal studies will enhance the understanding of resilience from a systemic perspective.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-025-25285-5.