ABSTRACT
The development of psychological problems in children and adolescents is influenced by many factors. A distinction may be made between risk factors that pre-dispose children to developing psychological problems, precipitating factors that trigger the onset or marked exacerbation of psychological difficulties, maintaining factors that perpetuate psychological problems once they have developed, and protective factors that prevent further deterioration and have implications for prognosis and response to treatment. Pre-disposing risk factors, protective factors and maintaining factors may be subclassified as falling into the personal or contextual domains, with personal factors referring to biological and psychological characteristics of the child and contextual factors referring to features of the child’s psychosocial environment including the family, the school, the peer group and involved treatment agencies. A framework within which some of the more important variables in each these categories are classified is presented in Figure 2.1. This chapter describes the variables listed in this framework.
