Is Risk a Useful Concept in Understanding Young People - Essay Example

Is Risk a Useful Concept in Understanding Young People Discuss and Analyse. Introduction Risk has always accompanied the development of human society; it is all about uncertainties: possibilities, chances, or likelihoods of events, often as a consequence of some activity. Policy makers, professionals, and the public have become increasingly concerned with identifying and managing young people who are not only troubled or at risk, but create troubles or take risks, which may otherwise appear to be unnecessary (Van Lenthe, F.J., 2001). Young people are young just after adolescence, which is a time when young people are particularly prone to risky behaviours, such as drug use and unprotected sex. The risk takers who are most abundantly young provide a comprehensive view of youthful involvement with drinking, smoking, illicit drug use and risky sexual activity. Most of the established studies on young people in Western societies have been devoted to an understanding of their transition within their families and schools towards adulthood and their working lives. During the different stages of their transition, the young people confront or create risks as they go through. Risk behaviours that include tobacco, alcohol, and drug use are common in young adults, and it is a common finding that those who engage in risky behaviours are prone to engage in additional risky behaviours with passage of time. Social sciences have established that as the number of risky behaviours increase, depression as a comorbidity emerges that take away the productive and fruitful time out of the youth (Viner, R. and Macfarlane, A., 2000). Although not universally true, the young people are prone to take risks sometimes to the extent of a risky life. More recent research in Europe, the UK, the US, and Australia demonstrate a out of bound mismatch between the conventional models of transition and the attitudes, choices, and experience of young people themselves in reality. The reason may be significant social and economic changes since the early 1970s. These could have introduced elements of uncertainty, unpredictability and risk into the lives of the young (Young, R., Beinum, MV., Sweeting, H., and West, P., 2007). Thus, it can be stated that risk is a useful concept in understanding young people. In the following sections, evidence for that would be analysed in order to find support for this statement, so some solution can be found to prevent this. Endemicity of Risk There is evidence that risk and uncertainty are certainly endemic, and technology and social institutions are unable to eliminate it. The modern notion of risk is guided largely by uncertainty. Harvest failure, pestilence, migrations, new currents in religion, technological developments, and the unforeseen consequences of urbanization have all exerted a powerful and typically unpredicted influence on the problems and difficulties the population including the young face (Case, S., 2006). Traditionally, lack of certainty in life was attributed to "the other" agencies beyond human control: the ignorance of imperfect humanity, divine agency, luck, destiny, or fate. Many events in the history of society have been the eye openers of the fact that risk has accompanied technical development and revealed the weaknesses of institutions for managing the resulting uncertainty. The social scientific study of people's responses to risk tends to focus on either their narrow cognitive or their broad sociocultural roots (Dworkin, J., 2005). The Young There is a diversity of experiences that characterises the lives of the young people. Although they belong to the same generation they have emerged with different aspirations for the future and have made different choices about their personal interests and priorities, and hence they have different life patterns that do not match with any linear assumption or prediction. Research has shown that young people do indeed possess a sense of persistence and determination in the face of frustrated expectations. After education, every young individual expect employment, regular income, and independence. However, in most of the cases, after graduation, they often discover that the outcome is opposite to the plan. Unemployment and the increased competitiveness for employment hit as a reality and mimics an adversity. They try to cope, and their response is embroiled in sociocultural forces. This is almost a history of the major bulk of the youth who are exposed to the danger of insecurity (Gulliver, P. and Begg, D., 2007). The society and upcoming generations responds to this crisis even though they are not actively involved in this crisis. Although people tend to attain a sense of personal invulnerability to risk by externalising the threat, these strike a large number of people quite suddenly. All individuals and successive generations who have not been directly affected by the danger think about the possibility of being affected, once it has been brought to their attention. Mass media performs a large role in disseminating this sense of danger to all by circulation of the knowledge about risks between the expert, media and lay realms (Gray, E., McCambridge, J., And Strang, J., 2005). Anatomy of Risk The perception of being surrounded by myriad threats also relates to the nature of numerous contemporary dangers that the young may be exposed to. Many are not amenable to senses; however, sociological and, increasingly, psychological approaches support the recognition that laypeople's knowledge systems also offer valid interpretations of risk, and the ways in which people perceive and respond to risk are significantly determined by the social organization or group to which they are attached and their position in it. Culturally, however, risk perceptions are often understood as linked to the individual's social identity (Henley, N. and Donovan, R. J., 2003). Some argue that risk taking behaviour in response to growing uncertainties have to be accepted, because they can only be managed and not eliminated, and therefore risk awareness is to be interpreted chiefly as the product of society itself. If the notion is that the young people demonstrate risky behaviour, then perhaps, the idea of shifting risks and responsibility to the subject would be responsible for the preoccupation with risk issues (Rothman, AJ. and Kiviniemi, MT., 1999). Why they Take Risks It has been commented that risk is subjectively defined by individuals who may be influenced by a wide array of psychological, social, institutional and cultural factors. Moreover, many of these factors and their interrelationships can be quantified and modelled in order to elucidate the responses of individuals and their societal connections to the hazards that confront these individuals. Research later has demonstrated that several contextual factors were identified to affect the perceived seriousness of risks, for example, the expected number of fatalities and the catastrophic potential of a risk. Further it has been revealed that risks with a low probability but high consequences would be perceived as more threatening than more probable risks with low or medium consequences (Klein, WMP and Stefanek, ME., 2007). To answer why young people take risky decisions, it has been suggested that beliefs and attitudes about the nature, consequences, history, and justifiability of a risk are also important in taking a risky decision. Moreover, it is frequently the fact that young people like others evaluate risky situation depending on the conviction of having personal control over a risk, familiarity with a risk, the perception of equitable sharing of both benefits and risks, and the opportunity to blame a person or institution responsible for the creation of a risky situation, only they take these decisions more frequently (Lee, TMC., Leung, AWS., Fox, PT., Gao, J., and Chan, CCH., 2008).. Life Factors There are recent reports that there are increased psychological disorders and emotional instability among many young people of the present days; however, the flip side is that many young people negotiate the teenage years with alternating periods of calm and angst or even manage to cope with the all odds into the adulthood relatively peacefully. Michell has cited many studies that have focused on individuals who have compromised or are compromising their mental and physical well being by maladaptive and risky behaviours. Factors that have been identified are all in common likely to upset their volatile blend of hormones and emotions, and in reality they have a high propensity to facilitate such (Pickett, W. et al., 2002). These include failure at school, specially today when the prospect of unemployment can cause malaise and anxiety; conflict with parents; or the development of a lifestyle which is in conflict with that of parents, and lack of integration into the group of peers that can result in insecurity, poor self-esteem, and isolation (Morrow, V., 2001). There is evidence that young people tend to polarize towards a set of maladaptive or risk taking behaviours by adopting a number of them or just avoiding them. Given the social reasons of risk taking behaviour, failure of technology to prevent uncertainty, and rapid pace of economic demands leading to severe frustration among the young, who otherwise, would want to be engaged in fruitful self-proving meaningful activities, the number who would want to avoid them would be miniscule (Michell, L., 1977). Smoking Taking the example of smoking as a risky behaviour, despite authorities relentlessly projecting the health risks of smoking, it can be analysed from different perspectives. The common trait remains the same, unconventionality, the unwillingness to conform to conventional social values. The other factors that contribute heavily, although not all in a single case and in a pattern of a variable mix are parental smoking, parental attitudes to smoking, siblings' smoking behaviour, lower socioeconomic status, lone parent families, lifestyle characterised by an anti-school orientation and truancy (Elders, M J, Perry, CL., Eriksen, MP., and Giovino, GA., 1994). With that, one can add personality factors such as extraversion and neuroticism and differential tolerance to stress. For the young, in the present sociocultural state of affairs, stress is perhaps the most important factor. Risk-Takers Risk-takers provide a comprehensive view of youthful involvement with drinking, smoking, illicit drug use and sexual activity. Some forms of risk taking are interconnected in that one leads to other. Given these situations, although some young people are specially prone to take risks due to lower socioeconomic status and its social disadvantages, risk-taking is commonplace adolescent behaviour, difficult to restrain or curb. This may appear as a pessimistic statement, but evidence from reality strongly supports such perception (Gruskin, S., Plafker, K., and Smith-Estelle, A., 2001). Past attempts on the part of authority to reduce youthful alcohol and drug misuse has encountered disappointing failures, and despite the well elaborated risk of AIDS throughout the world, most young people have not modified their sexual behaviour. Illicit Drug: Use and Abuse By drug it is meant psychoactive or mind altering drugs. These include alcohol, tobacco, and prescribed as well as illicit drugs. Once can analyse and this risk taking behaviour by understanding the complexity of the factors that influence human risk-taking. This is important since the etiology of any potentially harmful behavior including drug abuse is to be understood in order to design realistic ways of minimizing risk-taking by young people. It has been suggested that specific individuals, due to biological or psychological traits, are particularly attracted to stimulant, depressant or hallucinogenic drugs. Some people like particular drug effects. Some studies have suggested that problem drinkers or problem drug users do differ from controls in relation to psychological characteristics such as neuroticism, hostility or extraversion. It is clear that the young are more likely than older people to use illicit drugs. In addition, adolescents may well be more inclined than older people to take risks, to test out their limits to the full. Sometimes such risk-taking involves serious drug misuse. A high level of stressful life events is incriminated in serious alcohol and drug problems. It may be the fact that stressful life events may be caused by or result from alcohol and drug misuse. Moreover, it is possible that difficult life circumstances may combine to produce both such life events and heavy or problematic psychoactive drug use. There is evidence to suggest, firstly, that risk-taking is normal amongst young people and, secondly, that some individuals do take more risks than others. In relation to certain behaviours, adolescence appears to be a time of heightened risk taking. Evidence of this high-risk behavior is ample in literature where it has been acknowledged that young people pamper high risk behaviours such as drug use in the context of personal values and goals, and young people not infrequently use more than one illegal drug (Gray, E., Mccambridge, J., And Strang, J., 2005). Drinking Risky single-occasion drinking is considered the most common type of hazardous alcohol consumption among young people. It is very difficult to reduce this type of risky behaviour, since literature suggests poor success in interventions designed to reduce this. This type of behaviour includes any or many of the following, binge drinking, frequent binge drinking, heavy sessional drinking, or heavy episodic binge drinking (Young, R., Sweeting, H., and West, P., 2008). More over the implication of this risky behaviour increases when it has been demonstrated that there is a considerably increased risk of drink driving accidents with a consumption of one or fewer drinks a day. The important thing to note is that this problem is highly prevalent in young adults. The health risks of such behaviour is beyond the premise of this topic; however, such health consequences may be associated with the long-term use of alcohol, and the longer one drinks excessively, the greater the increased risk of disease or accidents due to drunken driving (Williams, AF, 2006).. Young people are actually overrepresented in measures of alcohol-related harm, and within this group the risk rises according to the number of drinks consumed on each occasion. The deleterious effects of alcohol on psyche, affect, intellect, and judgment are well known, and it has been observed that young people when drunk are more likely to have accidents, whether at home, at work, on holiday, or on roads (Shope, JT., 2006). The effects of alcohol on judgment are particularly salient in the area of drinking and road or automobile accidents. Young people who are often inexperienced drivers, where drunken driving is more of an adventure, rather than a need, the risk of having an accident increases by a factor of 5 at the legal limit of 80 mg/100 mL of blood (Senserrick, T M ., 2006). Sex Risk taking among the young may be the cause of most of the risky behaviour associated morbidity among young people. These may be related to behaviours that result in unintentional or intentional injuries, drug and alcohol misuse, tobacco use, sexual behaviour, diet, and physical inactivity. Mental health problems in young people are common, with an overall prevalence of around 15% (Wight, D. et al., 2002). The reasons for these have been highlighted earlier. It has been established that risky sex behaviour is very intimately associated with a range of mental health diagnoses. Clinical depression in the young has been associated with increased rates of risky sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and early sexual experience (Jewell, D., Tacchi, J., and Donovan, J., 2000). Many researchers have documented a high prevalence of risky sexual behaviour in association with substance misuse. Young people who use alcohol or marijuana or both do engage is subsequent riskier sexual activity and increased drug misuse (Highet, G., 2004). Therefore, risky alcohol and drug consumption may increase the chances that young people will engage in high risk sexual behaviour, more so as a result of impaired decision making, mood elevation, and the reduction of inhibitions. It is almost akin to a psychiatric impairment leading to a circumstance that can massively interfere with the ability to assess risk or to adopt risk reduction strategies (Bennett, DL. and Bauman, A., 2000). While probing into the mechanisms of such risk taking, it has been found that these including risky sex may also represent an indirect expression of anger or a mechanism to exert some control over one's life (Dolan, M., 2004). The reasons have been discussed before as to why such anger occurs, but sometime, the irritation of the real life that a young person faces may lead him to seek diversion through sex to relieve tension and as a salve of affection seeking without assessing the risks associated with it such as AIDS, STD, or even an unwanted pregnancy (Thomson, C., Currie, C., Todd, J., and Elton, R., 1999). Conclusion Youths who drop out of school have special and complex needs, with extremely high rates of sexual behaviour, mental health problems, and drug misuse. Whatever may be the background, at the level of individual and intimate life, risk has always been bound up with pleasure, in sexual relationships, eating, drug-taking, and a huge range of other activities, which often the young pursue. This is manifested through the example of 'edgework', such as, deliberate risk-seeking in mountaineering, motor sport, relationships, sexual adventuring, and the new 'extreme' sports such as base jumping or free diving, and the participants are always young. The health or other risks that the young population have been exemplified in the discussion and analysis above, but it is important that in order to understand the young people and to help them come out of these risky behaviours, the risk as a concept is understood from their context so appropriate measures may be taken to implement successful programmes. Reference List Bennett, DL. and Bauman, A., (2000). Adolescent mental health and risky sexual behaviour. BMJ; 321: 251 - 252. Case, S., (2006). 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