A comparison of drug involvment between runaways and school youths

FRANÇAIS :
Etude statistique sur un échantillon de 253 jeunes résidant dans des foyers, ayant quitté leurs famille, par rapport à des jeunes en situation "normale". Démographie, fréquence et type de consommation de drogues, opinions et attitudes face aux actes illégaux. Débat sur la différence entre les "fugueurs" et les "sans-abris". La consommation et l'abus de drogues sont de 2 à 3 fois plus élevés chez les jeunes perturbés ; leur état d'esprit les incite à minimiser la gravité de la dépendance.
ENGLISH :
Problems related to homeless / runaway youths have received increased attention in recent years. Homeless / runaway youths manifest many problems in addition to being absent from home and without supervision of a parent or guardian. The purpose of the study was to determine drug use and abuse pattern of homeless / runaway youths and to compare those patterns, along with attitudes toward selected illicit behaviors, with similar data collected from adolescents in school. Data were collected from persons (n=253) in homeless / runaway shelters in the southeast United States. Comparisons made with data from other studies of runaways and of youths in school indicate that drug use and abuse is two-three times more prevalent for runaways than with the school youths. Runaway's attitudes toward selected illicit behaviors are more tolerant than those of school youths. Intervention programs for runaway / homeless youths should reflect an understanding of the complexity of the psycho-social and behavioral history of the clients which is much different than that of those who are in school. (Author's abstract)