Adolescence? Rebellion, nonconformity, changes, complications. Yes, it is all that, but even more so it is the moment in which the person begins to define himself as an adult, to create his own personality. In this article we analyze the concept of adolescence and how this stage is key to the development of antisocial behavior.
We understand by adolescence, the evolutionary stage that ranges from approximately 11 years to the beginning of 20.
It comprises almost a decade of continuous changes both at a biological level (body growth, weight gain, height, sexual development) and a psychological (search for identity, need for independence, evolution of thought) and social (group trend, mass media ).
These can translate into problem behaviors such with a negative management of emotions, a difficult temperament, oppositional behaviors, or turning into serious dissocial behavior problems due to the effect of a series of risk factors throughout evolutionary development.
Antisocial behavior is defined as any behavior that reflects a violation of social rules or norms and / or is an action against others, a violation of personal rights.
These behaviors thus include a wide range of activities such as aggressive actions, theft, vandalism, pyromania, lying, truancy and running away from home, among others. All entail basic breaking social rules and expectations and they are behaviors against the environment, including property and people (Kazdin and Buela-Casal, 2002).
It is important to clarify that the presence of aggressive behaviors does not have to be linked to antisocial behaviors, existing non-aggressive antisocial behaviors, in the same way that there are antisocial and / or aggressive behaviors not associated with clinical disorder.
Thus we could distinguish subtypes within antisocial behaviors:
Those that are a crime and appear associated with a clinical disorder (adolescent who deals in narcotics and has a borderline personality disorder)
Those that are aggressive behaviors without the presence of psychological disorders in the person who performs them (an adolescent who exercises child-parent violence)
Those behaviors that appear within a clinical disorder (sexual abuse by an adolescent with bonding disorder)
Those that meet the three characteristics, are a crime, are aggressive and fall within a clinical disorder (adolescent with conduct disorder who mistreats his partner).
"My son was great until 12 and from one day to the next he started stealing".
"Towards mischief but it wasn't bad either"
"I had a lot of tantrums, but it was so funny."
Statements like these are common when you speak with parents who, for example, have to deal with the placement of their adolescent child in a reform center, or is involved in legal issues (probation, benefits for the benefit of the community).
The appearance of the first manifestations, very contrary to what is believed, does not occur in an advanced stage of the child's development but in early childhood.
In principle, these behaviors should be classified as troublesome, and wait, with the intervention of the family and school environment, the successive disappearance of the same.
If the minor develops in an environment in which the presence of risk factors is high, these behaviors, with a high probability, will increase in frequency, intensity and severity, giving rise to a pattern of behavior in which antisocial behaviors predominate.
If the adolescent persists in his behavior, it can lead to behaviors classified as a crime in the penal code and would be grounds for conviction if committed by adults.
And it is here where we find the first risk factor for the development of the behaviors that are the object of this article, childhood..
Santoyo and Corral (2008) mention that during childhood, the beginning of aggressive patterns -understood as coercive acts used by the members of a relationship to alter the behavior of another- are one of the main predictors of persistence of antisocial behavior in adolescence related to behaviors such as vandalism, addictions, school dropout, among others.
According to this and various studies on the subject, we can affirm that educational styles and the family system They are the main source of adolescent behavior, without least appreciating other risk factors such as the peer group.
So if the minor develops in a family with low cohesion, conflictive, Poor interactions between members, a negligent socialization style and coercive discipline, with more probability, problem behaviors, will increase in frequency, intensity and severity, leading to a pattern of behavior in which antisocial behaviors predominate.
The fact that we live in a society in continuous transformation, in which reality is many times more virtual than face-to-face, gives, if possible, a more important role to the family.
The home is the place where the most important things of the human being are said, made and manufactured.
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