[Violence and aggression in adolescents and young adults. Review of the recent literature]. / Violence et agressivité chez les adolescents et les jeunes adultes. Revue critique de la littérature récente.

ABSTRACT

A highly topical subject, violence, its consequences as well as its causes, deserve more attention on behalf of the public health authorities. On one hand, nowadays, the concepts in this field tend to become more global than before; however, on the other hand the epidemiological, etiological and therapeutic approaches benefit also from considering more limited behavior categories and age groups. In this review of the international literature, the authors focus their attention on intentional (excluding accidents) and interpersonal (excluding self-destructive behavior) violence. They consider by priority adolescents (10 to 19) and young adults (15 to 24). After a general introduction to the theme and the presentation of the relevant concepts and definitions, the authors, as a complement to their earlier publication on violence, develop epidemiological aspects concerning mortality, morbidity and the sources of information about these two topics. Their view is partly a critical one, including considerations on risk factors and risk predictors. The etiological aspects are developed along three axes biomedical components, mainly of neuro-psychiatric and neurological nature ; family violence ; the broader social environment. The following part is devoted to care and prevention. In the discussion, several of the main issues considered in the conceptual, epidemiological, etiological as well as curative and preventive approaches are brought up again, with a perspective on presenting new proposals for further consideration and developments as well as on broadening the initial debate of the introduction.