Human Violence in Stockholm County, Sweden

Abstract

ABSTRACT We studied the subsequent life and development of 182 teenagers sampled from the general population (the controls) and compared them with 345 teenagers of the same ages (the probands) who were taken care of by the Social Service Department, all of them from Greater Stockholm. There was more violence and aggressiveness in the behaviour of the probands than the controls and their early childhood was already filled with violence. The probands were exposed to assault and battery and they had beaten up other people in the community. They were also more often exposed to accidents, poisoning and violence than the controls. All of the probands but none of the controls abused alcohol and narcotic drugs, and the probands had more psychosocial problems than the controls. The probands had grown up in families with more abuse of alcohol and drugs, broken homes, an alcohol-abusing father and mother and had taken up their parents ‘concomitant drug and alcohol abuse by parental influences. There were differences in social adjustment and health status between the probands compared with the controls. Social assistance was required to a much greater extent by the probands and they were registered in the Temperance Register and the Criminal Offenders Register and were in contact with the child welfare authorities more often than the controls. The probands also accounted for a larger number of visits to psychiatric clinics and wards than the controls. The underlying problem is parents’ lack of awareness of their enormous importance for their children's mental health, both during their childhood and during adolescence: Only by having access to the adult world's supportive regulatory system, through discussions with their parents or other adults, can children benefit from positive preventive effects in the long run.