The study revealed that teenagers typically run away from home as a means of escaping from situations and circumstances that they view as oppressive or stifling, such as the rules and curfews imposed by parents and guardians. In retrospect, many of them acknowledged that running away did not solve their problems and often caused them more problems than those from which they had hoped to escape. Among teens who runaway, the desire to spend more time with friends or to associate with those with whom parents had forbidden from association was a predominant theme as well. To...

They concluded that running away is almost always harmful to teenagers and that social services should direct more effort to identifying and resolving the types of issues in the home known to be associated with runaway behavior and that safer alternatives are needed to protect the safety, health, and welfare of teenagers who…