Context:

Adolescence is a period of fragility that can potentiate the emergence of stressful events and crises. Several factors have been associated with mental health problems in adolescents, being the family, a fundamental axis to be evaluated, as it may present protective and risk factors for the adolescent.

Objective:

To identify situations in the family context that cause mental suffering in adolescents.

Method:

This is an integrative review guided by the recommendations of the PRISMA model, carried out in the databases PubMed, LILACS and SciELO, with publications from 2014 to 2019, using the descriptors "adolescent", "mental health" and "family relations".

Results:

19 studies were included, with predominance of international publications. The situations in the family context that are associated with the mental suffering of adolescents are the parenting style, the parents' mental suffering, conflict and intrafamily violence, abuse of psychoactive substances by family members, divorce, migration and parental incarceration. The adolescents' mental suffering was evidenced by a series of internalizing and externalizing symptoms, an increased risk of self-mutilation and attempted suicide in addition to the harmful use of psychoactive substances.

Conclusion:

The results obtained reinforce the vulnerability of adolescents to mental suffering and point to the need to develop effective interventions to deal with this important public health problem, in addition to strengthening support networks for adolescents and families.

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