IMAGES OF YOUTH VIOLENCE IN VALADARES’ PRINTED MEDIA:A CASE OF PUBLIC HEALTH

This is a study which aimed to map, in Valadares’s printed media – Journal Diário do Rio Doce (DRD), the images of adolescents involved in violent events as the victim and / or transgressor, in urban Governador Valadares - MG during the period January to December 2010. The method used was descriptive and exploratory, including the combination of qualitative with quantitative descriptions, from the analysis of previously defined categories and of the literature concerning the matter at hand. The types of violence were classified according to the Event Logs of Social Defense and their places of occurrence distributed in the respective Integrated Areas of Public Safety (IAPS). The images reflect a higher incidence of male adolescents of 16 years of age, with 36% in the victim category and 27% in the transgressor category, involved in events of type, urban and deadly: drug trafficking in the transgressor category (47%) and homicide in the victim category (34%). Of the 48 districts mentioned in the reports, 36% of them belong to the 95 IAPS. Actions to reduce and prevent damage in this age group constitutes challenging tasks for health’s professionals.