In an epidemiological study within a general school population, 450 youngsters in public secondary school who describe themselves as runaways were compared to 11,734 youngsters who had not run away from home.
Running away from home is associated with “ psychical malaise ” and with violence, both endured and enacted; the runaway is suicide-prone, violent, delinquent ; he abuses both legal and illegal substances. The runaway seeks help and consultation, and it is necessary to find multi-focus treatments when faced with the diversity of manifestations : running away, suicide attempts, delinquency, and legal and illegal substance abuse.
Archives par mot-clé : Running away from home
Dominique Dray : adolescence : world shock at the crossroads of culture
Group homes that receive adolescents from urban housing projects are here envisaged as places of contact between two cultures – the shock of two cultures. Educators must create structural liaisons between the world of adolescents and that of discipline, to work to transform the shock into a cultural crossroads. This implies a rearrangement of the institutional setting.
The placement of a youth in a group home is here envisaged as a situation similar to migration. Without negating the relevance of the usual interpretation of transgressive adolescent behavior as symptomatic, a different, and complementary reading is offered here. These behaviors are a attempt by adolescents to maintain their inscription in the world they come from, and more generally, to deal with a conflict of norms.
The example of a runaway illustrates this argument.