COGNITIVE VULNERABILITY FACTORS OF STAYING ON THE STREET: HOPELESSNESS AND DERELICTION

Abstract

The homeless are one of the populations with greater vulnerability given characteristics such as the deterioration of support networks and familiar and affective bonding, together with difficulties for the economic and social integration, which increases the perception of lack of resources and wide exposure to situations with little or null control. It is proposed that the street situation is related to factors of cognitive vulnerability that can facilitate the resignation and inaction, such as negative attributions on the
situation and on itself. A field work consisting of workshops and interviews was carried out that allowed to identify and to approximate a description of factors such as the hopelessness, the lack of control of the own behaviors and emotions, the dependency and culpability of others as a limitation for the taking of responsibility, the fatalism and the dereliction as emotional answers before the perception of abandonment and instability, that reproduce the vulnerability before external socio economic demands as strong
as those that understand the street situation. It is concluded that the exposed results can orient offers of psychosocial interventions oriented to minimize these factors of vulnerability with so much to contribute to the dignity of the people.