Safety and coping strategies of homeless youth

Connie Chung

The author examined a corpus of 200 surveys and 50 qualitative interviews conducted with homeless youth to expand the base of knowledge about how homeless youth protected themselves on the streets and coped with trauma. In the first chapter, the author addressed how homeless youth stayed safe on the streets to reduce or avoid incidents of street-based victimization. In the second chapter, the author explored how homeless youth coped with exposure to trauma, and how they felt about seeking mental health and counseling services as one form of coping. Many studies have been conducted on victimization among homeless youth on the streets. Street-based youth were focused on issues related to survival and self-conservation in a setting where their near-constant public exposure put them at significant risk. Although much is known about the dangers of street life, our understanding as to how...