Psychological Distress and Coping Mechanisms among Street Children

Abstract

The present research was designed to find out the relationship between psychological distress and coping mechanism among street children. A sample of (n = 150) children were approached through different areas i.e, slums (adjacent to F11, H/9.4) (n= 78), roadsides of G11 (n = 23), main Sunday bazar (n=10) and G.10 markaz slum area (n =39). The research was carried out by applying depression anxiety stress scale – 21 (Aslam, 2008), and Brief COPE (Sabih, 2006). Urdu translated versions were used in the present study. The sample was mainly based upon the children who were out in streets to earn money, the age range of the sample was 10- 17 years of age (M= 14.21; SD = 1.22). The children were involved in different labor types i.e, selling things (n=77), begging (n=38), trash collectors (n=25), car wash (n=10). The findings revealed positive correlation between the psychological distress avoidant coping mechanisms. Problem focused coping mechanism positive coping and religious denial is found to be negatively related with psychological distress. Further analyses were done on the different demographic variables such as age, gender, labor type, working hours, time duration of being on street. The mean differences on age groups (early adolescent, middle adolescent) revealed that middle adolescent group uses more problem focused coping mechanism and active coping mechanism, whereas psychological distress is found to be more in early adolescent group, analysis on gender showed that girls experience more distress as compare to boys, and boys use more problem focused coping mechanism as compare to girls, analysis on labor type showed no significant result, but analysis on working hours showed that the children who work for more hours face more distress.The study’s findings raise concern that many of our street children are facing psychological distress for which they adapt a particular coping mechanism, the implication of the study is in social psychology field it can be used for making certain educational programs for the children so that they are able to handle themselves in any stressful situation.