Psychological Help-Seeking in Homeless Adolescents

Pádraig Collins and Chris Barker
Additional contact information
Pádraig Collins: The State Hospital, Carstairs, Scotland
Chris Barker: Sub-Department of Clinical Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, c.barker@ucl.ac.uk

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2009, vol. 55, issue 4, 372-384

Abstract: Background: Homeless young people in the UK are a vulnerable group: their levels of psychological problems, physical ill health and violent victimisation exceed those of their housed counterparts. Aims: This qualitative study aimed to examine homeless young people's views about seeking psychological help for their problems. Method: Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 16 homeless young people at an emergency hostel. A thematic analysis and an analysis of the participants' narratives were undertaken. Results: A sense of hurt and anger at the perceived betrayal by their families and society made many participants reluctant to seek help and to trust help offered by others, and accordingly they placed a high value on self-sufficiency. Many said that they would, however, seek help from people whom they perceived to be genuine, caring, trustworthy, empathic and capable of containing their distress. Conclusion: Mental health professionals providing clinical services for this underserved population need to be aware of the importance of rejection and abandonment issues, along with the consequent hurt, anger and mistrust.

Keywords: adolescents; help-seeking; homeless; trust (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020764008094430 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:55:y:2009:i:4:p:372-384

DOI: 10.1177/0020764008094430

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Social Psychiatry
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().