Colombian Street Cidldren: Their Mental Health and How they Can be Served

Abstract

Children living without parents, managing somehow to survive, are common throughout Latin America. UNICEF has warned that personal and political tragedy looms in Latin America, where, it has been estimated, there are 40 million [1]. Yet, perceptions and descriptions of these children are varied and often contradictory. The characteristics of these children and policies that might be beneficial to them are the topic of this paper. In 1984 1 was fortunate to be a Fulbright Scholar in Colombia and to have an opportunity to examine the lives of street children in a systematic way. As part of my Fulbright work, I formed a research team with 2 Colombian psychologists and 12 graduate students in psychology from a Colombian university. Our first task was to get as close as possible to the street children in order to gain their confidence and thus learn about their lives. Initially we made contact through an open-door program called Bosconia that gives the children lunch and medical care. As we became acquainted with the children, we began to meet them on their own turf, despite admonitions from many well-meaning people that this would be dangerous. We spent time with the children as they ate, played, worked, and even as they slept so that we could share with them the variety of experiences they had as they moved around the city, living as they normally did. The second task, after we got to know the children, was to administer to 56 of them a series of psychological tests that gave us further