Does Poor Living Conditions Affect Children?

By Author: Jennifer Baxt
Total Articles: 200
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While there are many things that can influence the mental health of an individual, either through genetics, events or social life, the environment in which people live in can have one of the greatest, lasting effects on a person for the rest of their life. Adults and children alike are affected by the living conditions in which they are living, though possibly in different ways. Adults are often affected by the stress of their financial situation and not being able to provide for their families, why the children are sometimes affected by their poor living conditions in how they develop mentally.

Poor living conditions affect everyone living in them, old and young. Children, however, are going to be affected in a different way than the parents are, though the way the parents handle the situation can have a large affect on how the children will react and learn from it. Children are impressionable until they reach a certain age and become the adults in society who have their values and ideals sorted out for themselves. Of course, what children learn comes from where they grew up. They learn how to act and behave from their ...
... parents, from the older kids in the area in which they grow up and from how other adults behave and view their neighborhood. When children grow up in a house that is falling apart in a relatively poor part of town, they will often develop different mentally than the children who grow up in a decent house in a good part of town. Crime in the poorer neighborhoods and the harsh life that the children grow up in, as well as with the possible constant conflicts in the house from the stress of the adults' situation, will directly impact on how the child develops mentally. Children who grow up on poor living conditions will often have difficulty with depression later on in life. They will sometimes have difficulty in developing a decent social life and can have a distorted view of how they should live their lives. Depression, however, is the typical result of growing up in a house where the parents fought, where the neighborhood was affected by high crime rates and where the schools may have had an overall atmosphere that was more negative than positive.

Most of these children will not realize what kind of affect growing up in such an area had on them until they are adults and have moved away. They then start to realize that they feel down or depressed most of the time. Having difficulty making friends or developing healthy relationships can also be other affects of their childhood. Seeking professional help through online counseling can help people who are still suffering from the effects of their childhood can help them work toward a brighter future in their adult lives. Living in such a stressful atmosphere while growing up can make a person forever uncomfortable and worried in their adult lives. They don't want to continue living in a bad part of town. They worry that they won't be able to provide for their family and that they will have to raise their family in the same environment that they grew up in. An online therapist can help to put these worries to rest. Online therapy with an online counselor can help a person see that they can take their childhood experiences and use that to work from; to raise their children in a better and less stressful environment and give them a better start to life than they had.