Socio-psychological Aspects of Teenager Adaptation in Residential Cares

Abstract

For the development of the human being as biopsychosocial residence in the social environment plays an important role, including the process of adaptation to this environment.

The phenomenon of adaptation is seen as an active process of adaptation to the environment requirements. With the system approach under this phenomenon they understand a continuous process of the mutually conditioned impact of a person and his/her social environment, the success and adequacy of which depends on both the individual psychological characteristics of a person and the environmental factors.

In the Explanatory Russian-Ukrainian dictionary of the psychological terms they pay attention to three aspects of the use of the term "adaptation" in psychology: a term that refers to the physiological, professional, social and psychological adaptation. In our study, more attention should be paid to the same social and psychological adaptation under which we understand the adaptation to new social conditions for the personality or a group of people.

The phenomenon of adaptation is closely connected with the phenomenon of socialization. On the one hand, socialization is considered as continuous adaptation of the living organism to the environment as its ability to adapt to the reactions of other people, while on the other hand, adaptation is considered the part of socialization, its mechanism.

In this context adaptation acts as a prerequisite and a result of successful socialization of the child that occurs in three main areas: activities, communication and consciousness.

The main features that have influence on the teenager adaptation in residential cares are:

the so-called phenomenon of "we" that contributes to children in a kind of identification with each other;

lack of free space in which a child could rest from the other children, that cause unrealized needs of the child in the personal living space;

full state support for children, the consequences of which is the inability of children to plan and control their actions by themselves, consumerism, lack of thrift and responsibility;

limited circle of contacts and their uniformity, which can cause problems in communication with a teenager in the future.

Thus, the specificity of a teenager adaptation in residential cares is caused mainly by specifics of the environment and also certain psychological characteristics of the individual young person.