Psychological difficulties of orphaned teenagers

Abstract

Nowadays one of the important problems in Ukraine is the increase in the number of orphans and children deprived of parental care, which is an indicator of the social, economic, and political situation in society. One of the causes of orphancy is the loss of parents because of hostilities. Psychological problems of orphaned teenagers are determined by the lack of parental attention and love, early deprivation. The underdevelopment of identification mechanisms, as a result of such deprivation, becomes the cause of emotional coldness, aggressiveness, hostility, increased vulnerability, a feeling of loneliness, and the manifestation of negative accentuations of the adolescent's character. Objective. The research deals with the theoretical analysis of the problem of orphanhood and the psychological difficulties of orphan adolescents in the scientific literature, an empirical study of the psychological difficulties of orphan adolescents. Methods. To solve the set objective, we used a set of methods, such as the theoretical method – the analysis of expert sources; the empirical method – the method of diagnosing the level of subjective feeling of loneliness by D. Russell and M. Ferguson; the method of determining the accentuations of character by K. Leonhard; statistical methods – quantitative and qualitative analysis of results and correlation analysis by K. Pearson. The research was conducted on the basis of Sviatoshyn Children's Boarding Home in Kyiv. Thirty orphan adolescents participated in the reaearch: 15 girls, 15 boys. The results of an empirical study of the psychological difficulties of orphaned teenagers showed that they are dominated by high (30%) and medium (45%) levels of loneliness, and only 25% of respondents have a low level; the pronounced types of character accentuations are excitable (16,7%), hyperthymic (13,3%), affective-exalted (13,3%), emotional (16,7%). The results of the correlation analysis showed that the higher the level of loneliness, the greater the level of manifestation of demonstrative, stuck, excitable, hyperthymic, anxious, affective, emotional types of character accentuations; the lower the level of loneliness, the greater the manifestation of the following character accentuations: pedantic, dysthymic, cycloid. We see the prospects for further research in the development and approval of the program for the correction of psychological difficulties of orphaned teenagers.