Journal of Depression and Anxiety
Open Access

Abstract

Psychosocial Distress among Children Living on the Street in Mumbai City, India

Tushar Savarkar

Children living on street are considered as most marginal and socially excluded section of the society. They are vulnerable to face problems like substance dependence, abuse, neglect, sexual problems and violence. The objectives of the study were to examine the psychosocial distress among children on street in Mumbai city and factors associated with that. The primary data has been used in this paper which was collected through a survey of 234 children living on the street during October 2015 to November 2016. The study has used the GHQ 12 scale to examine the psychosocial distress among the children living on street. The result indicates that two-thirds of children from age group 13-15 years and 16-18 years were facing severe kind of distress. Gender wise analysis shows that boys were slightly more prone to psychosocial distress than girls. Children from Muslim religion were considerably more prone to have psychosocial distress than children from other religion. Children those who were staying five years or more were having considerably severe kind of distress. About half of the children those who were engaged in begging or rag picking were having moderate kind of distress. The study has found that factors like age of the children, duration of stay, gender and their occupation contributes to the distresses among the children on street.