Psychology and Psychiatry

Social maladjustment

Social maladjustment - this is the complete or partial loss by the subject of the ability to adapt to the conditions of society. That is, it is a violation of the relationship of a person with the environment, which is characterized by the impossibility of his positive social role in certain social conditions corresponding to his potential.

Social disadaptation is characterized by several levels that reflect its depth: latent manifestations of disadaptation phenomena, maladaptive "perturbations", the destruction of previously formed adaptive mechanisms and connections, entrenched maladaptation.

Socio-psychological maladjustment

Adaptation literally means adaptation. This is one of the most significant concepts in biology. It is widely used in concepts that treat the relationships of individuals with their environment as homeostatic balancing processes. It is considered from the point of view of its two orientations: the adaptation of the individual to the external new environment and adaptation as the formation on this basis of new personality traits.

There are two degrees of adaptation of the subject: maladjustment or deep adaptation.

Socio-psychological adaptation is the interaction of the social environment and the individual, leading to the ideal balance of values ​​and goals of the group in general and the individual in particular. In the course of such an adaptation, the needs and aspirations, the interests of the individual are fulfilled, its individuality is found and shaped, the individual enters a socially-new environment. The result of this adaptation is the formation of professional and social qualities of communications, activities and behavioral reactions adopted in a particular society.

If we consider the adaptive processes of the subject from the standpoint of the socio-psychological process of inclusion in the activity, then the main points of the activity should be the fixation of interest in it, the establishment of contacts with individuals who surround, satisfaction with such relationships, inclusion in social life.

The concept of social maladjustment of personality means the breakdown of the processes of interaction of the subject with the environment, which are aimed at maintaining balance within the body, between the organism and the environment. This term appeared relatively recently in psychology and psychiatry. The use of the concept of “disadaptation” is rather contradictory and ambiguous, which can be traced mainly in assessing the place and role of maladaptation states with respect to such categories as “norm” or “pathology”, since the parameters of “norm” and “pathology” in psychology are still little developed.

Social maladjustment of personality is a rather versatile phenomenon, which is based on certain factors of social maladjustment that impede the social adaptation of the individual.

Factors of social maladjustment:

  • relative cultural and social deprivation (deprivation of necessary goods or vital needs);
  • psychological and pedagogical neglect;
  • overstimulation with new (by content) social incentives;
  • lack of preparedness for self-regulation processes;
  • loss of already established forms of mentoring;
  • loss of the usual team;
  • low degree of psychological readiness to master the profession;
  • breaking dynamic stereotypes;
  • cognitive dissonance, which was caused due to the discrepancy of judgments about life and position in reality;
  • character accentuation;
  • psychopathic personality formation.

Thus, speaking of the problems of socio-psychological maladjustment, implies a change in the internal and external circumstances of socialization. Those. social maladjustment of personality is a relatively short-term situational state, which is a consequence of the influence of new, unusual irritating factors of a changed environment and signals an imbalance between the demands of the environment and mental activity. It can be defined as a difficulty, complicated by any adaptive factors to transforming conditions, which is expressed in inadequate reactions and behavior of the subject. It is the most important process of socialization of the individual.

Causes of social maladjustment

Social maladjustment of the individual is not an innate process and never occurs spontaneously or unexpectedly. Her education is preceded by a phased complex of negative personality neoplasms. There are also 5 significant causes that affect the occurrence of maladaptive disorders. These reasons include: social, biological, psychological, age, socio-economic.

Today, most scientists consider social causes to be the primary source of deviations in behavior. Due to improper family education, interpersonal communication disorders, the so-called deformation of the processes of accumulation of social experience occurs. This deformation often occurs in adolescence and children due to erroneous upbringing, poor relationships with parents, lack of understanding, mental trauma in childhood.

Biological reasons include congenital pathology or brain injury, which affects the emotional-volitional sphere of children. Children with pathology or trauma are characterized by increased fatigue, difficulty of communication processes, irritability, inability to prolonged and regular exertion, inability to exercise will. If such a child grows up in a dysfunctional family, then this only reinforces the tendency toward deviant behavior.

Psychological causes of occurrence are caused by the peculiarity of the nervous system, character accentuations, which under unfavorable circumstances of upbringing form anomalous character traits and pathologies in behavior (impulsivity, high excitability, lack of balance, restraint, excessive activity, etc.)

Age reasons are characteristic of the adolescent's age, lability and excitability, accelerating the formation of hedonism, the desire for idleness and carelessness.

Socio-economic reasons include over-commercialization of society, low family income, the criminalization of society.

Social maladjustment of children

The significance of the problems of social maladjustment of children is determined by the current situation in society. The current situation that has developed in society should be regarded as critical. Recent studies show a sharp increase among children of such negative manifestations as pedagogical neglect, lack of willingness to learn, mental retardation, fatigue, poor mood, exhaustion, excessive activity and mobility, lack of focus in mental activity, problems with concentration, early anesthesia and alcoholization.

Obviously, the formation of these manifestations is directly affected by biological and social circumstances, which are closely interrelated and are caused, in the first place, by the transformed living conditions of children and adults.

Problems of society are directly displayed on the family in general and children in particular. Based on the research, we can conclude that today 10% of children are characterized by various developmental disabilities. Most children from infancy to adolescence have any kind of illness.

The social adaptation of an adult young person is affected by the conditions of its formation in childhood and adolescence, its socialization in a social child's environment. Therefore, there is a significant problem of social and school maladjustment of the child. Its main task is prevention - prevention, and correction, i.e. corrective methods.

A maladjusted child is a child who differs from his peers for reasons of adaptation problems in the living environment that have affected his development, socialization processes, and the ability to find solutions to problems natural for his age.

In principle, most children rather quickly and easily, without any particular difficulties, overcome the states of maladjustment with which they occur in the process of life activity.

The main causes of violations in the social adaptation of children, their conflict can be personality or psyche, such as:

  • lack of basic communication skills;
  • inadequate evaluation of oneself in communication processes;
  • excessive demands on the people who surround them. This is especially acute in cases where the child is intellectually developed and is characterized by above-average mental development in the group;
  • emotional instability;
  • prevalence of installations that impede communicative processes. For example, the humiliation of the interlocutor, a manifestation of their superiority, which turns communication into a competitive process;
  • fear of communication and anxiety;
  • closure

Depending on the causes of violations in social maladjustment, the child can either passively submit to pushing peers out of his circle, or he can leave the embittered one and with the desire to take revenge on the team.

Lack of communication skills is quite a significant barrier to children's interpersonal communication. Skills can be developed through behavioral training.

Social maladjustment can often manifest itself in the aggression of the child. Signs of social maladjustment: low self-esteem, along with excessive demands on peers and adults, lack of desire to communicate and fear of communication, lack of balance, manifested in an abrupt change of mood, demonstration of emotions "in public", isolation.

Disadaptation is quite dangerous for children, as it can lead to the following negative consequences: personal deformities, delayed physical and mental development, possible brain dysfunctions, typical disorders of the nervous system (depression, inhibition or excitability, aggressiveness), loneliness or self-estrangement, problems in relationships with peers and other people, to the suppression of the instinct of self-preservation, suicide.

Social maladjustment of adolescents

The process of socialization is the introduction of the child into society. This process is characterized by complexity, multi-factoriality, multidirectionality and poor prediction in the end. The process of socialization can last a lifetime. It is not necessary to deny the impact of the innate qualities of the body on personal properties. After all, there is a formation of personality only as far as the inclusion of a person into the surrounding society.

One of the prerequisites for the formation of personality is the interaction with other subjects, transmitting the accumulated knowledge and life experience. This is accomplished not by simply mastering social relations, but as the result of a complex interaction of social (external) and psychophysical (internal) inclinations of development. And it represents the cohesion of socio-typical traits and individually significant qualities. It follows from this that the personality is socially conditioned, it develops only in the process of life activity, in the change of children's attitude towards the surrounding reality. From this we can conclude that the degree of socialization of an individual is determined by the multitude of components that, in combination, add up the general structure of the influence of society on a single individual. And the presence of certain defects in each of these components leads to the formation in the personality of social and psychological qualities that can lead a person in specific circumstances to conflict situations with society.

Under the influence of the socio-psychological conditions of the environment and in the presence of internal factors, the child appears maladaptation, manifested in the form of abnormal - deviant behavior. Social maladjustment of adolescents is born with violations of normal socialization and is characterized by the deformation of the reference and value orientations of adolescents, a decrease in the significance of the reference character and alienation, primarily from the impact of teachers in school.

Depending on the degree of alienation and the depth of the resulting deformations of value and reference orientations, there are two phases of social disadaptation. The first phase consists of pedagogical neglect and is characterized by alienation from school and the loss of reference importance in school, while maintaining a fairly high reference in the family. The second phase is more dangerous and is characterized by alienation from both the school and the family. Lost connection with the main institutions of socialization. There is an assimilation of distorted value-normative ideas and the first criminal experience appears in youth groups. The result will be not only a lag in school, poor academic performance, but also increasing psychological discomfort experienced by adolescents at school. This pushes adolescents to search for a new, non-school communication environment, another peer reference group, which subsequently begins to play a leading role in the socialization of adolescents.

Factors of social disadaptation of adolescents: crowding out of a situation of growth and personal development, disregard of the personal desire for self-realization, self-affirmation in a socially acceptable way. The consequence of maladjustment will be psychological isolation in the communicative sphere with the loss of a sense of belonging to its culture, transition to attitudes and values ​​that dominate the microenvironment.

Unmet needs can lead to increased social activity. And she, in turn, can result in social creativity and this will be a positive deviation, or manifest in anti-social activities. If she does not find a way out, she can rush to search for a way out in the addiction to alcohol or drugs. In the most unfavorable development - a suicidal attempt.

The prevailing social, economic instability, critical state of health care and education systems not only does not contribute to comfortable socialization of the individual, but also exacerbates adolescent maladjustment processes associated with problems in family education, which lead to even greater anomalies in adolescent behavioral responses. Therefore, more and more the process of socialization of adolescents is becoming negative. The situation is aggravated by the spiritual pressure of the criminal world and their values, rather than civil institutions. The destruction of the basic institutions of socialization leads to an increase in juvenile delinquency.

Also, the following social contradictions affect the sharp increase in the number of maladjusted adolescents: indifference in secondary school to smoking, the lack of an effective method of dealing with absenteeism, which today have practically become the norm of school behavior along with the continuing reduction of educational and preventive work in government organizations and leisure facilities and raising children; replenishment of juvenile groups of criminals at the expense of adolescents who dropped out of school and are lagging behind in their studies, along with a decrease in the social interrelations of the family with teachers. This facilitates the establishment of contacts between adolescents and juvenile gangs, where unlawful and deviant behavior develops freely and is encouraged; crisis phenomena in society, which contribute to the growth of anomalies in the socialization of adolescents, along with a weakening of the educational influence on adolescents of public groups, which should exercise education and public control over the actions of minors.

Consequently, the growth of maladaptation, deviant behavior, juvenile delinquency - is the result of the global social exclusion of children and youth from society. And this is a consequence of the violation of directly the processes of socialization, which began to be uncontrollable, spontaneous.

Signs of social maladjustment of adolescents associated with such an institution of socialization as a school:

The first sign is school failure, which includes: chronic school failure, repetition, insufficiency and fragmentaryness of the learned general educational information, i.e. lack of knowledge and skills in learning.

The next sign is a systematic violation of an emotionally colored personal attitude to learning in general, and some subjects in particular, to teachers, life perspectives associated with learning. Поведение может быть равнодушно-безучастным, пассивно-негативным, демонстративно-пренебрежительным и др.

Третий признак - регулярно повторяющиеся аномалии поведения в процессе школьного обучения и в школьной среде. For example, passive-refusal behavior, lack of contact, complete abandonment of school, sustained behavior with discipline violation, characterized by oppositional defiant actions and including active and demonstrative opposition of his personality to other students, teachers, disregard for the rules adopted in school, vandalism in school .

Correction of social maladjustment

In childhood, the main directions of correction of social maladjustment of an individual should be: development of communication skills, harmonization of interpersonal communication in the family and in peer groups, correction of some personality traits that prevent communication or transformation of the manifestations of properties so that they cannot negatively affect communication sphere, the adjustment of children's self-esteem to bring it closer to normal.

Currently, trainings are especially popular in the correction of social maladjustment: psychotechnical games aimed at the development of various functions of the psyche, which are associated with transformations in consciousness, and role-based socio-psychological training.

This training is aimed at resolving the internal contradictions of the subject in terms of developing certain skills to perform specific social functions (the formation and consolidation of the necessary social and cultural norms). Training takes place in the form of a game.

The main functions of the training:

  • training, which consists in the development of skills and abilities necessary for learning, such as: attention, memory, reproduction of the information received, skills in foreign speech;
  • entertaining, serves to create a more favorable atmosphere at the training, which transforms learning into an exciting and entertaining adventure;
  • communicative, consisting in establishing emotional contacts;
  • relaxation - aimed at relieving emotional stress;
  • psychotechnical, characterized by the formation of skills for the preparation of their own physiological state in order to obtain more information;
  • preventive, aimed at preventing unwanted behavior;
  • developing, characterized by the development of personality from different sides, the development of character traits by playing all kinds of possible situations.

Socio-psychological training is a specific psychological impact, which is based on active methods of working in groups. It is characterized by the intensity of the preparation of the individual for a more full and active life. The essence of the training is specially organized training for the purpose of self-improvement of the personality of the individual. It is aimed at solving such tasks as: mastering social and pedagogical knowledge, forming the abilities of knowing oneself and others, enhancing ideas about one’s importance, forming various abilities, skills, and abilities.

Training is a complex of consecutive classes with one group. Tasks and exercises are selected for each group individually.

Prevention of social maladjustment

Prevention is a whole system of socially, economically, and hygienically directed measures that are carried out at the state level by individuals and public organizations to ensure a higher degree of public health and prevent diseases.

Prevention of social maladjustment is scientifically conditioned and timely actions that are aimed at preventing potential physical, sociocultural, and psychological collisions of certain subjects belonging to a risk group, preserving and protecting human health, supporting the achievement of goals, and uncovering internal potential.

The concept of prevention is to avoid certain problems. To solve this problem, it is necessary to eliminate the existing causes of risk and increase the protective mechanisms. There are two approaches in prevention: one is aimed at the individual, the other - at the structure. In order for these two approaches to be as effective as possible, they should be used in combination. All preventive measures should be directed at the general population, at certain groups and at particular individuals at risk.

There is primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. Primary - is characterized by a focus on preventing the occurrence of problem situations, on the elimination of negative factors and adverse conditions that cause certain phenomena, as well as on increasing the resistance of an individual to the effects of such factors. Secondary - designed to recognize the early manifestations of maladaptive behavior of individuals (there are certain criteria of social maladjustment that contribute to early detection), its symptoms and reduce their actions. Such preventive measures are taken in relation to children from risk groups right before the appearance of problems. Tertiary - is to carry out activities at the stage of an already emerging disease. Those. These measures are being taken to eliminate the problem that has already arisen, but at the same time, they are also aimed at preventing the emergence of new ones.

Depending on the reasons for which maladjustment was caused, the following types of preventive measures are distinguished: neutralizing and compensating, measures aimed at preventing the occurrence of situations that contribute to the emergence of maladaptation; the elimination of such situations, the control of preventive measures and its results.

The effectiveness of preventive work with maladjusted subjects in most cases depends on the availability of a developed and integrated infrastructure, which includes such elements as: qualified specialists, financial and organizational support from regulatory and state bodies, interconnection with scientific departments, specially created social space solutions to maladaptive problems, in which their traditions and ways to work with maladjusted people should develop .

The main goal of social preventive work should be psychological adaptation and its final outcome - successful entry into a social team, the emergence of a feeling of confidence in relationships with members of a collective group and satisfaction with one's own position in such a system of relationships. Thus, any preventive activity should be purposeful for an individual as a subject of social adaptation and consist in increasing its adaptive potential, on the environment and on the conditions of the best interaction.