ABSTRACT
Runaway and homeless adolescents fall into nearly all of the risk categories for internalization symptoms enumerated in the adolescent depression literature. Research on nonrunaways indicates that adolescents are at risk for depressive symptoms when they have parents who are rejecting or emotionally unavailable and when they live in families where there is high conflict. Given the numerous risk factors associated with precocious independence, there is a surprisingly lack of systematic research on the mental health status of runaway and homeless adolescents. The small numbers of studies that exist indicate that homeless and runaway adolescents score higher on measures of behavioral and emotional disorders than do nonrunaway youth. The emergent risk profile for internalizing symptoms among runaway and adolescents is that of a female who has spent significant time on her own and has a history of being sexually abused by a caretaker adult.
