Resiliência, promoção de saúde e prevenção da violência entre adolescentes

Abstract

Adolescence, despite several attempts at categorization, is a period difficult to be limited chronologically. According to PAHO and the WHO, this is the period between 10 to 19 years. The Brazilian Constitution, following the Statute of Children and Adolescents, considers the period between 12 and 18 years. It is a phase of complex biopsychosocial changes, a period in which the person is in a position of vulnerability, establishing a risk. By its magnitude and transcendence, violence is seen today as important psychosocial risk factor, and was incorporated into the agendas of national and global governments as a priority and a challenge for public health. In our country, violence and accidents are classed together under the name of external causes, and ranks third in the causes of mortality in general. The data are even more critical when considering adolescents and young people, who are the most affected, being cited as the main victims and perpetrators of violence. Among them, external causes are the major cause of mortality. It is accepted that knowledge about the risks is important to fight them, but limit the efforts in extinguishing the risks is not feasible. The focus of the studies should not be limited to the risks, but rather focus on protective factors, that can modify the individual's response to adversity, protecting and providing alternatives to overcome the negative events, enhancing his ability to move on. This process is called resilience. Within the strategies linked to strengthening the capacity of individuals and communities to develop and maintain conditions and healthy lifestyles and a culture of peace, there is the concept of health promotion, which appears as a central strategy in all initiatives in recognize the violence as a problem of public health. In this work, we study the protective factors within the frameworks of health promotion and resilience, involved in violence prevention among adolescents. This is a qualitative and quantitative study presented in the form of two articles. The first, a systematic review of literature, and the second, an article of results obtained by analyzing database consisting of questionnaires completed by 702 adolescents and young adults from Belo Horizonte. In the review were confirmed the importance of interventions based on health promotion and strengthening of resilience as valuable strategies to prevent violence. In the article analysis results, we see that the lack of social and affective support networks are statistically related to the adoption of various risk behaviors among the sample studied. Thus, we can conclude that health promotion aimed at strengthening protective factors and, consequently, of resilience, can actually be a very useful tool in preventing violence among youth.