Psychological aging and homelessness

Abstract

This work aimed to understand the early psychological aging in the homeless population of the city of Salta, Argentina; in this process, the psycho-social factors that affect this phenomenon were identified. It constituted a qualitative study of descriptive level, that was developed in the period of 2016-2018. The purposes of this article are to make this socially vulnerable group visible and to emphasize the psycho-social health interventions they need. For the data collection observations, interviews and workshops were carried out to a group of twenty participants, between 20 and 55 years of age, with incomplete basic education, unemployed or in a precarious work situation. The approach used to analyze was narrative perspective from the development psychology. We were able to identify that the concept of early psychological aging is characterized by being a process that is multidimensional, multi-directional, and with plasticity and discontinuity and that basically consists of a generalized subjective stagnation; it crosses-over the following dimensions: biological, emotional, social, labor and existential of a person. We observed that the homelessness appears as a relevant factor that affects the psychological aging of persons who are in this situation.