Psychosocial deprivation
Brief definition:
Psychosocial deprivation = psychical hardship (mainly)
More rigorously - psychosocial deprivation is the state of long-term dissatisfaction of vital psychological needs, especially emotional and social needs
To understand deprivation = To understand needs
- extreme social isolation
- Institutional care, hospitalism
- ad R. Spitz: anaclitic depression; stage of protest, despair, detachment
- absence of a
stable carer deprivation in the family
parent loss, addiction, promiscuity, poor social situation (e.g. refugee), "overemployment" of parents, etc.
emotional immaturity, character immaturity, serious psychopathology, deprivation in parent´s childhood…
- Relatively positively adapted children:
- children with a direct increase in unsaturated needs:
Child manifests itself with maldaptive behavior in the area of the unsatisfacted need (attempts to attract attention, intrusiveness) or in general behavior (total restlessness, hyperactvity); commonly deprived needs are emotional and social, so the behavior is mostly targeted to fulfill these needs. On the other hand interst in school work is on decline; these children are noticeable with both bad behavior and worse school performance (that does not match intelligence).
- children with a substitutive increase in the intensity of other tendencies:
manifested particularly by aggressiveness, opposition, destructive tendencies, explosions of anger, cruelty, increased nutritional needs…;
„manifestations of primitive affects uncontrolled by anxiety and conscience.“
- passive, apathetic, "attenuated“ type:
a group of symptoms of regressive nature (sucking finger, enuresis and encopresis, automatisms, anorexia); children are detached, reserved in attempts for contact, introverted, sometimes "strikingly nice and kind"; children seem silent and obedient, sometimes even frightened, infantile, indifferent to success and failure, without initiative, may even appear retarded in more severe cases
- Socially hyperactive type:
In the context of a poorly stimulating environment, children try to seek the maximum supply of social incentives and to attract attention; but they do not know the stability of contact, emotional attachment, social interest is rather chaotically dispersed, communication and social behavior remain at a lower level.
- Socially provocative type
The need for attention and contact is manifested in a disturbing or violent manner towards educators, or aggression towards other children (as competitors); children may appear defiant, "uncontrollable", but in individual contact with educator they may act as "exchanged" – kind and affectionate. Later, they tend to get to unbearable life situations.