Abstract

SILVA, Conceição; LEMOS, Ida  and  NUNES, Cristina. Stressful life events, psychopathology and resilience in institutionalized and non-institutionalized adolescents. Psic., Saúde & Doenças [online]. 2013, vol.14, n.2, pp.348-355. ISSN 1645-0086.

Institutionalized adolescents tend to be socially more stigmatized and to present life pathways marked by significant psychosocial adversity. The possibility of adolescents to engage in adaptive developmental pathway depends on a number of external and internal resources, protective in the face of adversity. In this work we compare a group of 40 institutionalized adolescents with a group of 40 adolescents of the general population, regarding the number of stressful life events (SLE) in childhood and adolescence, psychopathological problems, and resilience. It is our aim to analyze possible associations between psychopathological problems and AVS in both groups. Participants are adolescents living in Madeira Autonomic Region, aged between 12 and 17 years old. We applied the Healthy Kids Resilience Assessment Module (HKRAM), the Youth Self Report (YSR), the Inventory of Stressful Life Events, a socio-demographic questionnaire for institutionalized adolescents, and a a socio-demographic questionnaire for general population adolescents. Overall, institutionalized adolescents seem to experience more SLE and to report more psychopathological problems. However, regarding the resilience characteristics, they present identical levels of resilience of the non-institutionalized. Also, significant associations between SLE and psychopathological problems were found in both groups. These results are discussed in light of the constructivist perspective of resilience.

Keywords : Adolescents; institutionalization; psychopathological problems; resilience; stressful life events.

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