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Street children and volatile substance misuse

Letter from Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

John Dunn*
Affiliation:
Departemento de Psiquiatria, Escola Paulista de Medicina, Rua Botucatú, 740, São Paulo-SP, Brazil, 04023-900
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Living in London one gets used to seeing teenagers living rough on the streets, sleeping in shop doorways, and begging for money. Similarly in São Paulo and other large cities in Brazil homeless and destitute children are a common sight, but there are several striking differences. First, in Brazil there are many more of them, they are noticeably younger and they are often seen doing some form of job or ‘bicos' to earn money, such as cleaning shoes or car windows, ‘guarding’ cars, and selling small items, e.g. sweets, fruits and flowers. Another important difference is the danger to which these children are exposed. There have been frequent reports, some of which have reached the international media, of street children being massacred by vigilantes (some of whom have links with the police).

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Briefings
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1994

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