Every Youth As Problematic: Identifying Mental Health Problems Among Juveniles through the School Guidance System

Due to economic growth rapidly in 1990s, the social structure of the Taiwan society has been changed radically. At the same time, juvenile crime rates also increased sharply. Some scholars have asserted that the social transformation may cause juveniles to be “anomie”, lacking moral guidance. Teenagers who have emotional distress tend to harm themselves or others such as committing to suicide or bullying others. In 2014, the Taiwan government established a school guidance system in order to address this issue more effectively. The system is based on the framework of clinical risk management. The objective of the research is to investigate the relationships between risks and mental health factor of high-risk students and to discuss the issue of “What juvenile behavior would be problematic concerning at-risk students?” The researcher interviewed ten school guidance teachers who participated in guidance work and counseling. Moreover, the researcher selected one counseling office at secondary school where she worked as volunteer for three months in order to understand the everyday practice of the counseling office and to investigate how the teachers identify and help at-risk students. The major result reveal that the social classification such as foreign-born Taiwanese, indigenous youth, single parent-hood, low-income family, domestic violence are easier to identify as the at-risk student. Also, student who has the behavior such as lying, bullying, impolite to teachers could be the indicator of the priority list of teacher guidance. In short, the findings indicate the types of the social orders that the Taiwanese society tends to sustain.