Comparação entre as percepções de adolescentes e responsáveis acerca de competências e dificuldades do comportamento infantojuvenil na pandemia

Abstract

Adolescence is a phase that encompasses important changes at the physical, cognitive and psychosocial levels, which can make it more conducive to the development of problems related to mental health. The scientific literature points out that identifying psychiatric symptoms at this stage is not easy, due to biases and insecurities regarding the reliability of information provided by adolescents, and it is important to obtain information from more than one informant. Thus, it is essential to consider the family context, as it plays a relevant role in social support and preventive intervention. Furthermore, contextual aspects such as the COVID-19 pandemic may have further affected the mental health of adolescents, due to uncertainty about the future, fear of illness and death, changes in routine and social life. However, there are few studies on the impacts and how the skills and behavioral difficulties of adolescents can help to overcome this problem. The objective of the study was to investigate possible relationships between the perception of adolescents and their guardians regarding the competences and behavioral difficulties of adolescents during the pandemic. For this, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) instrument was used, with a sample of 178 volunteers, 89 adolescents between 12 and 17 years old and their guardians, based on an online collection. As a result, the sample indicated a perception of normality in most of the scales, however with significant differences in relation to adolescents and those responsible for them when comparing gender, education, education network and among informants. It is concluded that the return of hybrid classes, social interaction, vaccination, greater knowledge about the pandemic disease and the cognitive flexibility of adolescents may have helped their mental health, in addition to the fact that the different perceptions of competences and difficulties behavior among adolescents and guardians, confirm the need for a third informant.