Barbara Jankowiak (project researcher)
The main problem presented in the book is that of risk behaviour among young people today. Studies have been conducted on different aspects of how adolescents function during this transition stage, which, on the one hand, is characterised by great creative potential regarding one's identity and relations with other people and the world, and on the other by uncertainty and risk. In creating their own identity and (re)constructing their place in surrounding social reality, young people engage in new forms of behaviour, including risk behaviour. These are not chance behaviours, but a response to changes occurring inside the organism and external expectations.
The book comprises two parts. The first is devoted to a discussion of a theoretical and diagnostic nature. In this part an analysis was carried out of the significance of young people's risk behaviours for the developmental tasks of adolescence, based on the assumption that young people act in a purposeful way in order to achieve the developmental objectives that appear sin a specific context.
Part Two of the book contains an analysis and interpretation of qualitative research. A qualitative group case study was employed and this dealt with risk behaviour as perceived by secondary school class tutors and sociotherapists working with lower secondary school pupils in therapy. It was possible to gain an 'understanding of the phenomenon' of risk behaviour among young people by selecting study participants who deal with whole groups of young people (teachers), and with individuals from groups at greatest risk (sociotherapists), and analysing their responses.
Respondents revealed progressive (expressing developmental trends) and regressive functions of risk behaviour (expressing individual problems and developmental deficits) functions fulfilled by risk behaviour young people engage in.
Tab. 1.Progressive and regressive functions of youth risk behaviour
|
Functions |
Characteristics |
|---|---|
|
Progressive functions |
Risk behaviour fulfilling progressive functions aiming at copying with developmental tasks of the puberty (e.g.) separation from parents, building new forms of relationship, self-discovery, searching for place in a group, re-defining own relations with adults) and providing answers to a basic dilemma concerning the identity. Despite the inherent risk, progressive functions express developmental trends in teenagers. |
|
Regressive functions |
Risk behaviour fulfilling regressive functions is motivated by problems, traumas and developmental deficits carried by a young person into the new phase of life where new challenges await him/her. Young people try to copy with the past in the current developmental changes, adopting risk behaviour in the present. Risk behaviour with such underlying motivation place adolescents closer and closer to the psychopathology area. |
In consideration of both the intensity of behaviour shown, and their progressive and regressive functions, I distinguished four categories of risk behaviour, namely: exploratory, crisis, avoidance and deficit behaviour (figure 1, tab. 2).
Figure 1.Exploratory, crisis, avoidance and deficit risk behaviourof the youth
Tab. 2.Classification of risk behaviour of modern youth
|
Types of risk behaviour
|
Characteristics |
|---|---|
|
Risk exploratory behaviour |
Not very intensified behaviour incentivised by natural developmental exploration, self-searching, searching for own place in a group, setting one's new social status Young people may thus try alcohol as they start to feel adult, smoke cigarettes with peers to point out their appurtenance to a peer group, make sexual initiation as their love relations grow deeper and sexual activity builds up in a couple. Such behaviour entails a certain risk, but at the same time witnesses developmental trends in the youth. |
|
Risk crisis behaviour
|
They are much more intensified than the behaviour above, although also motivated by developmental trends. Crisis behaviour expressed a severe developmental crisis and constitutes a bigger threat. Adopting such behaviour, young people bring in more destruction to their activity, e.g. using psychoactive substances, becoming involved in fights, partying hard, abstaining from school, having sexual intercourses with new acquaintances without using contraceptive means. Young people try to solve adolescence crisis without having sufficient resources. Such behaviour brings further threat to young people´s safety, health and success in life. |
|
Avoidance risk behaviour |
Not very intensified behaviour motivated mainly by difficulties in earlier life phases. Avoidance behaviour is aimed at cutting problems and emotions off (e.g. by smoking cigarettes), not taking developmental challenges (e.g. playing games in the internet to avoid social contacts). Young people engaged in such behaviour are threatened with numerous risk factors (while protective factors remain scarce) in their development, thus they run increased risk of developing psychopathology (in this case probably internalisation disorders). The threat does not usually result from the risk behaviour itself, but from the lack of resources to cope with developmental challenges, such lacking resources hindering the development and adaptation. |
|
Deficit risk behaviour |
Intensified risk behaviour presenting a serious threat to development is due to stressful experience (e.g. unsatisfied needs, conflicts in family) and traumatic experience in a young person’s past life. The deficit behaviour may take form of risk sexual activities of young persons trying to satisfy their frustrated need for love and appurtenance, aggressive behaviour resulting from experienced violence, and drug taking to cope with painful memories. In the development of teenagers with such functional pattern there existed few factors protecting their development, and many factors of psychopathological risk which may adversely impact the person resulting in externalisation disorders, and also internalisation disorders. |
To sum up the considerations on risk behaviour in the youth, it should be stated that such behaviour is adopted in adolescence to face developmental challenges, and the choice of behaviour depends on the resources available to young people, the risk factors experienced, and the way young people coped with the challenges in earlier phases of their life. Such behaviour constitutes a form of adaptation, but also an attempt at defining oneself and one’s place in the world among peers and adults, thus it may be regarded as a form of autocreation.
References:
B. Jankowiak (2017), Zachowania ryzykowne współczesnej młodzieży. Studium teoretyczno-empiryczne (Risk behaviour among young people today. A theoretical-empirical study). Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM
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