meDigital Editor Richard Hook considers a New Year's cure for the rising numbers of 16-25 year-olds suffering depression:

The start of 2013 will have seen hundreds of people joining gyms, cutting carbs and firing up laptops in an attempt to meet their New Year's resolutions.

However, for thousands of 16-25 year-olds the need to claim a new job is far greater than a desire to fulfill some personal promises.

As this week's 2013 Youth Index from Prince's Trust shows, more young people than ever are saying that they are finding themselves "unable to cope with day-to-day life". It's hardly surprising when a glance at daily news stories regularly shows stories on the recession, rising university fees and falling job opportunities.

As someone who qualified through university within the last decade, it's hard to remember a time when youngsters who chose not to go down that route had less options available to them... but should a lack of jobs necessarily mean a lack of opportunities?

History shows that labour market movements are cyclical, so surely a protracted, albeit admittedly longer than hoped-for, period of "downtime" be the ideal time to put in place training schemes to enable young people to fill the growth which will inevitably occur in the coming decade?

Schemes like the Prince's Trust team programme, Catch 22's Positive Futures and ReZolve's skills network offer employers a perfect opportunity to create a win-win situation: entusiastic young staff willing to work for low cost and who can help develop their business to a point where they can be hired for a part-time or full-time position.

The positive spin-offs are clear. A workforce containing more 16-25 year-olds with aspirations for the future can only have a positive effect when they economy picks up and these people start earning more, then spending more, with the resulting boost to economic growth.

Of course, such a system requires set-up costs, but if we are able to acrue some £540m in National Lottery funding last year and find the £9bn it took to host last year's inspirational London Olympics then surely there are untapped resources which could be used to create a training infrastructure.

Returning to the Prince's Trust's findings, one key element showed that depression was doubley high in NEETs (Not In Education, Employment or Training) compared to those in work. Surely now is the time to act if the NEET number is not to become the norm?

As part of our committment to help young people train for future careers, we are always happy to receive submissions for blogs or news stories for JFHC - email richard.hook@pavpub.com or penny.hosie@pavpub.com for more details.