Social and Familial Aspects of Juvenile Conduct Disorders in Romania. Selected Cases Presentation from Forensic Psychiatric Board Admission

Juvenile delinquency in Romania has become a complex problem due to the imbalanced state of bio-psychological and social factors that should ensure the safety of children's development. When discussing children in legal terms, the person is no longer the focus of the problem as in adults, but he should be analyzed as a multitude of intrinsic and environmental factors that coordinated to develop a judicial problem. Most of those environmental factors refer to social aspects like discrimination, poverty, limited access to education, as well as family disorganization, victimization of child and exposure to negative psychological and affective stimuli that distort the emotional, behavioral and intellectual development of those children. Moreover, we can state that delinquent children are a mirror of social and familial problems left unattended or a fault of the system’s care for them. Therefore, there is a need to explore more effective protective and preventive measures while strengthening rehabilitation programs for vulnerable groups rather than seeking to isolate them. Given the above statement, the authors present a selection of cases that were addressed to the psychiatric forensic expertise for children. This paper will focus on social and familial aspects that disrupts the affective and intellectual mechanisms of these children, leading to aggressive behavior, lying and delinquencies as defensive and control responses to their disrupted environment. Also, these cases presentations will reveal other important characteristics of the cases and the difficulty of social and legal management of these children.