Comparison of coping skills, impulsivity and behavioral disorders in three groups of unsupervised, poorly supervised and normal teenagers

Master's Thesis in Clinical Psychology

Abstract

Comparison of Coping Skills, Impulsivity and Behavioral Disorders in Three

Groups of Unsupervised, Badly Supervised and Normal Teenagers

Unfortunately, today we are witnessing that the number of children and adolescents without guardianship and bad guardianship is increasing every day. Many social variables are involved in the phenomenon of homelessness and bad guardianship, which can be mentioned as economic factors, unemployment, addiction, etc. Behavioral disorders and effortlessness in adolescence are more important than in other periods of life, and coping skills act as a mediator between stress and mental health. The purpose of this research is to compare coping skills and effortfulness. Behavioral disorders were found in three groups of unsupervised, poorly supervised, and normal teenagers. The sample size includes 76 adolescents aged 12 to 18 (35 were abused, 15 were unsupervised and 26 were normal) who were selected by available sampling method. To collect data, the Lazarus and Folkman Coping Skills Questionnaire, the Achenbach Behavior Disorder Questionnaire - Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and the Barat Impulsivity Scale were used. Multivariate variance (MANOVA) and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were analyzed. The results showed that there is a significant difference between the three groups of unsupervised, poorly supervised and normal adolescents in terms of coping skills and impulsivity, but there is a significant difference between these three groups in behavioral disorders. The result is that unsupervised and poorly supervised adolescents show more behavioral disorders than normal adolescents. Keywords: coping skills, impulsivity, behavioral disorders, unsupervised adolescents, poorly supervised adolescents, normal adolescents. Introduction. 1-1 generalities.

Family as an important step shows special importance in different periods of growth, especially during adolescence, and if parents are unable to meet the needs of children and adolescents for various reasons, they leave adverse effects on their life. Children are subjected to physical and mental child abuse due to parents' emotional instability due to the use of drugs, or they are sold or rented due to economic poverty combined with the parents' social harm. Single guardianship due to divorce or leaving the family by one of the parents is another factor that is considered as one of the examples of abusive guardianship. In fact, part of the problems of orphaned and abused children are related to their hard experiences in life and the deficiencies that have arisen due to not meeting their needs.  Behavioral disorders, anxiety and depression have been more common among adolescents deprived of their parents than other behavioral disorders, and behavioral disorders among 13-year-old adolescents are more prevalent than other age groups (15, 16, 17). Deprivation of parents has been more traumatic for children who are at a younger age than for older children. Therefore, despite the downsizing and emphasis on quasi-family centers, we still see different age, educational and non-academic spectrums, both employed and non-employed, and even have different nationalities in these centers. And interactions between these classes can cause incompatibility and unrest (Sohrabi, 2019).  

One of the effective factors in the problems of this group of teenagers is stressful conditions and lack of family support. Accordingly, some of the studies conducted were limited to investigating the relationship between stress and disease. Mostly, the correlation coefficient between stress and illness was reported between 0.20 and 0.78, but most of these correlations were around 0.30 (Kobasa [1], 1979). Researchers believe that stress does not directly lead to illness (Lipa [2], 1994). Accordingly, some believe that there is a great connection between stress and disease, and apparently the same stressful experience can produce different effects in different people. Therefore, the belief became stronger that there are variables that act as mediators between stress and diseases. A major part of the researches conducted in the field of coping strategies are devoted to investigating and finding the effect of social relations, as well as determining the effect of these factors on people's adaptation to new life conditions and tensions related to these conditions (Wright[3] et al., 1985).Coping skills have a broad concept and several cognitive and behavioral components (Lazarus and Folkman [4], 1984). Coping styles [5] are considered as one of the important mediating factors between stress and mental health (Wang [6], 1993; Carver [7] et al., 1993). At the same time, this component is one of the components that has been widely investigated in the field of mental health (Paskar[8], 2003). The focus of the researches on stress coping styles is to determine the effective and efficient forms of these styles in dealing with stress (Summerfield and McCar [9], 2000). There are many definitions about stress coping styles (Lazarus, 1984). All these researchers emphasize that the response to stress is different in different people, and these responses do not always lead to stress reduction. All of them take certain steps to deal with stress. Lazarus presents the following sequence in relation to coping with stress: receiving a threat (threat perception), evaluating the ability to deal with the threat, applying a way to deal with this threat (cognitive and behavioral effort). Lazarus (1993) emphasized and distinguished two types of stress coping styles: A- problem-focused coping, which is aimed at solving the problem or taking action that changes the source of stress. B- emotion-focused coping, which reduces or manages the emotional disturbance associated with the situation.

The prevalence of behavioral disorders among children who have been deprived of their families, children who have been left unattended due to natural factors and disasters, or who live in day-to-day environments due to parental separation, economic poverty, addiction, or improper functioning of parents, is higher than other children (Kaplan, Crawford and Fishel [10], 1998). One of the other problems of these children is impulsivity.

Impulsivity is considered to mean acting with minimal thought about future behaviors or acting based on thoughts that are not the most important option for the individual or others (Swan and Hollander [11], 2002). Risky decision-making is very important in a person's personal and social life, and the disorder in this type of decision-making forms the core of the phenomenon and impulsive behaviors. Impulsive behaviors that are called risky behaviors in some approaches. It is said to functions that, although they are associated with possible damage or losses, but they also provide the possibility of obtaining a reward. These behaviors must have the following 3 factors: choosing one option from two or more possible options, accompanying one of the options with unfortunate consequences, not being clear about the possibility of the unfortunate consequences at the time of the behavior (Hakmi, 2013)

Therefore, it is checked here whether or not neglected and poorly supervised children suffer from a high level of impulsivity and disorders due to having inappropriate coping skills.

1-2 statement of the problem

Girls and boys who are kept in welfare day and night centers are usually in these centers for two reasons: "neglect" and "abuse". Welfare orphans are those whose parents have abandoned or died, and the majority of these children do not belong to specific families. These children are usually entrusted to the welfare organization since their infancy or at some point in time due to the death of their parents or abandonment by them. Parents of abused children who are kept in welfare usually do not have the authority to keep their children due to severe economic poverty of the parents, mental and social injuries such as addiction, imprisonment of the parents, acute physical or mental illnesses. These children and teenagers are in the category of people at risk and their parents often cause acute and sometimes irreparable problems for them when their children live with them. The death of the guardian, the incompetence of the guardian, the divorce and separation of parents or the inability to support them are among the reasons that identify children as orphaned or abused children. These children do not have specific behavioral and social problems in themselves and are affected by family and social conditions.

The main goal of quasi-family centers is to provide the main functions of the family for children and teenagers who are not cared for and poorly cared for, but simply transferring these children from the harmful environment of the family to an environment with less damage does not seem to be enough and the bereavement caused by the loss of the family exposes these children to psychological damage, behavioral problems, and academic problems.