PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS IN ADOLESCENCE AND POSSIBLE SOLUTION STRATEGIES

Abstract

Numerous and increasingly serious are the problems that affect young people during growth. It is necessary not to underestimate the problem both for the suffering and the risks for the life and health of young people, and for the difficulties in development that these problems can lead to future generations, with serious risks for social evolution. Adolescents increasingly experience problems of psychological suffering and this is manifested by pathological behaviors of various kinds: from prostitution to the abuse of drugs or alcohol to depression, self-injurious or anti-conservative acts. Aggressive behaviors towards others are also frequent, such as bullying, group violence, including sexual violence, up to intra-domestic violence. Phenomena such as new addictions to the internet and online gambling are also insidious. To understand how the se risky manifestations can develop, it is necessary to understand how the adolescent develops and identify the role of the family in managing the adolescent crisis. During the adolescent's psychological development, the educational and emotional shortcomings of the family do not stand up to the increasingly complex demands and challenges of our society, as well as the stressful and sometimes traumatic factors that adolescents face. Among the most important resources to stem these difficulties, helping the family represents a fundamental element in prevention and in the path of treatment. The interventions on the family are extremely important in order to reduce the unfortunate outcomes. Some encouraging evidence underlines how such interventions represent a real possibility of prevention of mental illness in adulthood with evident economic and social benefits.
They can be represented by a simple family counseling or by therapies of the family or the parental couple in cases where the relationship between the parents presents problems that are difficult to overcome which compromise their role towards the children, in particular in the pre-adolescent and early adolescent in their development. The interventions on children can instead be represented by targeted counseling, individual or group psychotherapy, also activated through the technological means within their reach