This case report is about Maria, a 22-year-old former foster youth who has not been able to make the transition into adulthood. In Maria, all the common traits found in emerging adults with traumatic pasts are intertwined with issues of identity formation, mental health problems, and obtaining employment. The sections below will explore Maria’s issues through psychological theories and research, environmental contributors, diversity considerations, interventions with the evidence base, and impacts if early supports during this critical window for Maria’s development are not provided.
Challenging Presenting Issue
For Maria, the everyday challenges of early adulthood experience further escalation of these complications through these conflicts in insecure attachment and complex trauma. A core struggle is her identity formation, capacity in relation to intimacy, and maturing financial independence through career readiness and clarity (Gilleard, 2020). Without proper support, Maria risks chronic unemployment, social isolation, and crises throughout adulthood.
Description of Case Study Adult
At 22, Maria coheres with Jeffrey Arnett’s concept of emerging adulthood—an unstable exploration full of potential, and risk between adolescent and mature adult roles. Normative markers of adulthood revolve around identity explorations in love, work, and worldviews, in which, eventually, one comes to enduring choices and self-sufficiency. However, because Maria’s traumatic upbringing caused her not to have the security to undergo identity experiments in the teenage years vital to this transition, it is contributing to current crises (Lee et al., 2019). She has failed to establish autonomy, and she is also unable to complete college or hold employment.
Maria has shown the fears of attachment and avoidance that are already present and tend to arouse much inner turmoil and, more often than not, cause difficulties within an individual. Using attachment theory, her problematic early relationships had not left any inner models of reliable, loving caregivers, and hence, the people she becomes involved with and herself do not feel available and worthy. Unhealthy coping often sabotages relationships or isolation (McKay, 2023). Without doing the recovery work that deals with those attachments therapeutically, Maria will have trouble bonding platonically and romantically.
Career immaturity means Maria needs help finding purposeful work. Super’s concept of how chaotic environments hindered the exploration of potential selves now fuels identity confusion and limits vocational clarity. According to Holland’s model, Maria’s creative talents suit artistic jobs, but doubt paralyzes them. As outlined by McKay (2023), without career maturity, critical skills, and agency from low self-efficacy—all three lacking components—the environment requires scaffolding unavailable from Maria’s impoverished background to facilitate financial independence.
Environmental Impacts
Socioeconomic barriers and social disconnectedness weigh heavily on Maria’s challenges. Research shows that access to job-skills mentoring, and contacts for networking are less available to disadvantaged youths, perpetrating inequalities with more advantaged people who have access to living-wage work. According to Williams (2023), the risks of long-term dysfunction go up if people do essential identity work by themselves, without advice from family or friends. Community engagement is protective but demanding when one is struggling inside. Cultural messages of having a life plan that includes marriage and kids by 30 are imposing; they shame those at a different pace and fuel Maria’s anxieties.
This results in those who are disadvantaged groups getting further marginalized in cases of inadequate support, and hence, trauma survivors juggling mental health concerns in the stages of life that are sensitive have to face stigma (McKay, 2022). The norms of social timing and the barriers to accessing business clothes for interviews or transportation for commutes on the part of low-income young people are also exemplified in the structures that position low-income young people in contrast to those privileged emerging adults with family safety nets.
Theoretical Analysis
“Emerjson’s” “emerging adulthood” theory, therefore, underscores how, with contemporary societal shifts towards protracted education and later marriage, identity explorations and self-focus are extended once adulthood begins, thus allowing industrialized, industrialized cultures a novel in-between period (Samsanovich, 2021). This period is dependent, most especially on those in trauma or instability, on the development of skills before committing to adult roles, and hence, interventions are crucial to Maria’s life satisfaction now. As noted by Erikson’s model, early adulthood continues to be about purpose and relatedness.
The attachment and social learning theories also stipulate how unmet needs in early childhood echo through behavioral and cognitive deficiencies to others and the regulation of emotions in the effort to build careers (Samsanovich, 2021). Gradualist cognitive views posit that for such deeply ingrained working models, corrective life experiences are needed to refashion worldviews to attain positive development post-adversity. The psychosocial acceleration theory notes that shorter timelines force disadvantaged young people to take on adult responsibility before they are ready, heightening challenges. Even the implications for a critical period suggest that early interventions could improve these trajectories.
Individual and Cultural Differences
In addition to other developmental obstacles due to potential neurodiversity traits or cultural particularities, María could benefit from adequate support that would help to compensate. For an example, the Latino culture may have familism values that might socially alienate Maria, who internalizes the stigma about struggles, without the acknowledgement of struggles. Another aspect that may result in the psychological effects is the lack of attachment to queer-affirming communities while keeping sexual orientation a secret. Finally, includes conditions like ADHD or learning disabilities that start to manifest themselves to a higher degree in the present time but which are still not diagnosed as well as childhood support which is at the moment inadequate.
Suggested interventions
Psychotherapy based on attachment, cognitive-behavioral training, tailored mentorship in her creative skills, paid internships that strengthen her job competencies, and coordinated case management may all contribute to her functioning. Programming should therefore promote identity exploration and varied support from social systems. Maria can generate a sense of self-efficacy to survive early business by being supported with intercultural scaffolding that ranges across needs during this transitional period. Mental health care being a scarce resource necessitates trauma-informed community programming all the more for reinforcing the resistance against the damage over the whole life.
Potential Long-term Impacts
Research has indicated that if emerging adults are not assisted early, their lives may be negatively affected. Findings have indicated that early assistance is one of the most critical unaddressed problems. These early adult problems carry the potential for chronic lifelong mental health dysfunction, long-term unemployment, the persistence of trauma symptoms, and instability of or isolated relationships over the life course. According to Deniz Mengu et al. (2022), financial hardship would probably involve the need to lean on poorly funded public services to satisfy most basic needs. In contrast, restrictions on eligibility may close off support and lead to homelessness. Given those strained coping abilities, crisis cycles could repeat and complexify, as Maria lacks familial wealth or safety nets.
Research evidence points out that an individual experiences shortened lifespans due to an adverse childhood experience, from cumulative medical conditions to suicide and the risk of violence exposure without adequate care. However, the emergent adulthood period does present the chance for healing and even the development of skills in changing trajectories, but the unresolved identity issues penetrate the vocational and relational spheres (Deniz Mengu et al., 2022). Attachment wounds and a lack of purpose multiply the likelihood of a midlife crisis. Nonetheless, secure attachment encourages resilience in the face of the impacts of lifelong trauma. However, adequate income and supportive communities may buffer these cascading failures to launch successfully through practical help now. Despite early deprivation, Maria will still gain resilience for thriving through scaffolding across needs.
Conclusion
This paper critically analyzes the challenges Maria’s case is going through with relevant research and theories of critical transitions in early adulthood. The discussion has thus pointed out the multifaceted obstacles and suggested biopsychosocial interventions corresponding to Maria’s needs in fostering identity coherence and skills for adulthood at this window of opportunity for her development. The impacts of adversity may persist lifelong without support, and emerging adulthood is a ripe time to build upon coping, relationships, and career direction from which to thrive moving forward.
References
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Gilleard, C. (2020). The final stage of human development? Erikson’s view of integrity and old age. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life, 14(2), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.1471
Lee, R. M., Cardona, K., & Russell, M. C. (2019). Historical perspective: Two decades of progress in treating metastatic colorectal cancer. Journal of Surgical Oncology, 119(5), 549–563. https://doi.org/10.1002/jso.25431
McKay, C. A. (2023). Healthy Relationships. Www.torrossa.com, 1–168. https://www.torrossa.com/en/resources/an/5529998
McKay, T. (2022). Stolen Wealth, Hidden Power: The Case for Reparations for Mass Incarceration. In Google Books. Univ of California Press. https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=qaJxEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP9&dq=Research+shows+that+access+to+job-skills+mentoring
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Samsanovich, A. (2021). Theory and diversity: A descriptive study of Erikson’s psychosocial development stages. Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/1230/
Williams, I. (2023). Understanding Digital Literacy for Job Search for Formerly Incarcerated Individuals (Doctoral dissertation). https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/177704
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