School refusal: Idiom of distress and/or Babel tower?

Abstract

Across Europe, school absenteeism is an increasing problem on the crossroad between educational and public-health political matters. This issue underlies socio-economical, sociological and school-related factors as much as it questions individual psychopathology and family functioning. Indeed, school refusal behavior among adolescents has become a very frequent reason to seek for psychiatric consultations. A recent review about this topic has shown that around 90% of these adolescents met the criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis, mostly anxiety disorders [1]. It appears to be a very complex and heterogeneous phenomenon which raises many questions, to date still unsolved: terminology confusions (truancy, school phobia, school refusal), lack of a concise definition, contradictory hypothesis regarding etiology, psychopathology and treatment plan depending on the paradigm the authors would refer to. In this presentation, we will elicit why school refusal can be considered as a new idiom of distress for adolescents in western societies, and we will show how, in clinical practice, these situations can become a genuine Babel tower in which no one, among health-care professionals, teachers, parents and patients, are speaking the same language.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.