YOUTH AND DEVELOPMENT: Risk factors and protection of adolescents in the city of Campos do jordao-state of São Paulo-Brazil

The teenager, individual in the situation of bio-psycho-social development, protected in Brazil by the ECA (Statute of the child and Teenager-Statute of Child and Adolescent), is the object study of this research. This work have been based on the theoretical contribution of Amartya Sen in order to carry out the survey on risk and protective factors experienced by adolescents in the city of Campos do jordao, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Adolescents answered to an adapted electronic version of the questionnaire proposed by Dell'Aglio, Koller, CerqueiraSantos and Colaça called Brazilian youth Questionnaire – version II. This research came out with four hundred and two (402) completed questionnaires, representing adolescents from public schools enrolled between the 7th and 9th grade, with 95% confidence level and with a margin of error of 4.42. The PSPP 0.8.4 software and LibreOffice Calc 5.0 had analyzed all the data. The results show low educational level of these teenagers ' families, with only 20% of mothers and 11% of parents completed high school. As a risk factor, the majority of the teenagers, (57.1%), are in constant contact with close addict friends, even though most of them are licit drugs users (32.9%). The teenagers ' families have also addiction related issues (55.1%), but mainly with licit drugs (41.4%). Among the participants, 21.4% said have tried drugs, marijuana being the most often mentioned (10%), followed by alcohol (8.2%). With regard to sexuality, 17.2% of the adolescents stated they had sexual intercourse, and 2.9% claim having sexually transmitted diseases and contracted 2.9% became pregnant. It is the alarming high rate of adolescents in this sample with suicidal ideation (25.4%) and 12.5% have attempted suicide, however the highest rate among them is comprised mostly by female individuals (86%). Other relevant data refer to restricted leisure opportunities in public and collective spaces, since the sample pointed primarily individual activities performed in their own homes, especially Internet use (68.8%) and TV watching (62.8%). The study also pointed out an index of 14.2% of the teens had been involved in fights with physical aggression and other illegal situations. They also identified aspects that may indicate the low level of family cohesion indicated by threats or humiliation – verbal abuse (23.9%) and physical abuse (11.9%). Those in charge of planning social development for the city in order to create successful citizens should carefully evaluate each of these indicators.

Keywords: Planning and Regional Development. Teenager. Risk. Vulnerability. Protection.