Deviant adolescents: social rejection and psychiatric diagnosis

This paper describes the relationship between acting-out behavior, compliance toward social norms, peer friendship choices, and psychiatric diagnosis among adolescent inpatients. The authors administered sociometric questionnaires to ten psychiatric patients and correlated their peer nominations with compliance to ward rules and diagnosis. They found that deviant adolescents themselves reject noncompliant adolescents, some of whom are psychotic, and accept involved, open, and trustworthy patients. Acceptance by peers was speculated as being related more to social competence than compliance to ward rules or diagnosis.