Violencia de hijos a padrescaracterísticas contextuales descriptoras de los menores agresores

Résumé

Due to the high impact that violence towards parents has in our society, it seems important to identify certain descriptive environmental variables that may have influence on this problem. For this purpose, this study evaluated a sample of 114 children and adolescents who attended the University Clinic of Psychology at the Complutense University of Madrid to receive psychological assistance for the issue of child-to-parent violence. The results showed that children who assault their parents had high levels of substance use, indeed higher than those shown by the general population in the case of tobacco, marijuana and other substances. Furthermore, these young people showed poor academic performance (88.5% of the subjects failed systematically) and had friendly relations with violent peer groups (80% had shown violent behaviour in their peer group). These results show that these environmental variables must also be taken into account for the design of specific prevention and/or treatment programmes addressing this type of phenomenon.