ABSTRACT
The ecological perspective can aid in efforts to generate hypotheses about causation, about unintended consequences, and about alternative avenues for intervening in social and personal problems. This model suggests that contextual factors are particularly influential in cases of individuals at high risk. This hypothesis may prove critical in understanding the consequences of maltreatment and the prognosis for troubled youth because it suggests that the impact of socially and economically impoverished environments may be greatest for the victims of such maltreatment. Temperamental differences are part of a more general pattern of interindividual biologic variation with implications for family functioning. The prognosis for troubled youth in troubled families, like the origins of high risk itself, is a matter of human ecology. Characteristics of the individual organism and the microsystem of the family interact with meso-, exo-, and macrosystems.
