The pain experiences and the vulnerabilities turn on the interpersonal violence among young people in the marginalized populations of Buenos Aires city: a field of intervention in mental health

Abstract

We present the results of a study in which we interviewed friends of young people, between 15 and 25 years old who died in front of other young people, in marginalized populations from the south part of Buenos Aires. The aim is to characterize the psychosocial experience that is triggered by these deaths among young people from their same networks of sociability. We used a qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive design, composed by the reconstruction of eight biographies and juvenile life tales, through a set of semi-structured interviews. The different contexts of each death are characterized, and also the psychic and social impact that they produce in the personal and social trajectories of young people. We attempt to discuss that such deaths cause pain experiences related to different processes of vulnerability, and that this is in tension with the importance of violence as a way of obtaining recognition and identity respect in youth sociabilities. The visibility of the processes of social vulnerability and the pain of young people close to the death can be very useful for approaches in the field of mental health with this youth population.