Quality of Life and Hopelessness among Adolescent Rag Pickers of Delhi, India

Abstract

Rag pickers are marginalized section of our society. India grappling the problem of shelter particularly in the urban societies besides other socio economic problems likes other Asian countries. Children living and working on streets are bound to adopt substandard life style due to lack of basic facilities. As results their quality of life includes physical health, social and psychological functioning severely destabilized and tends to develop sense of insecurity, hopelessness, depression, anxiety etc. Therefore, the study was conducted on the adolescents engaged in rag picking on the streets of Delhi to measure their quality of life and its impact on future perspective thinking. For that purpose sixty rag pickers were taken incidentally from different localities of Delhi. The participants of were male and between the age range of 12 - 18 engaged in rag picking. Sixty adolescents not engaged in rag picking and living with the parents were also taken from the same locality. WHOQOL-BREF and Beck hopelessness scales (BHS) were administered on both the groups of participants to assess their quality of life and sense of hopelessness. The finding suggested that rag picker adolescents were found suffering from significantly poor quality of life as well as higher degree of hopelessness. Findings further indicated negative relationship between quality of life and sense of hopelessness. The living conditions and quality of life of such population appear to be miserable as they usually tolerate constant hunger and suffers from malnourishment, which make them vulnerable to health related problems. For the sake of survival, adolescents working on street and perform variety of jobs including the collection of plastic, aluminium, paper, and anything else that can be resold. Sometime they are also found to be engaged in begging. Their poor quality of life expose them too many health related risk and derive them to be involved in illegal activities like drug trafficking, organ trades, prostitution and slavery especially in metropolitan cities. Such type of situations makes their life complex which in turn develops many psychological problems such as anxiety, psychological trauma, alienation, and feeling of hopelessness as a result they become psychologically vulnerable as well. Psychologically, these children are deprived of love, affection and family's sympathy. As far as quality of life is concerned it is defined in many ways and its measurement and incorporation into scientific study is not steady or easy. The World Health Organization defines Quality of Life as 'The individual's perception of his or her position in life, within the cultural context and value system he/she lives in, and in relation to his or her goals, expectations parameters and social relations. Every culture has different factors affecting quality of life and measures psychological, physical, social as well as economic well-being of the individuals. The general concept of quality of life was basically overlapping with the traditional concepts of health and functional status. An ideal health assessment, therefore, would include a measure of the person's physical health, a measure of physical, social and psychological functioning, and a measure of quality of life. Poverty is one of the most serious social concerns across the world today. Among the poor, the most vulnerable section of the society is people living on the streets. Whether they are gangs of street youth or panhandling drifters, no society is unaffected by the social problem of homelessness. The existing literature on street children or adolescents strongly suggests that there are many problems associated with life without a home. Studies have shown that homelessness is also associated with behaviour problem in