Community violence: A meta-analysis on the effect of exposure and mental health outcomes of children and adolescents

Abstract

Meta-analytic techniques were used to estimate the effects of exposure to community violence on mental health outcomes across 114 studies. Community violence had its strongest effects on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and externalizing problems and smallest impact on other internalizing symptoms. Victimization by community violence most predicted symptomatology compared to witnessing or hearing about community violence. Witnessing community violence had a greater effect than hearing about violence on externalizing problems, but both types of exposure had an equal impact on other internalizing problems. PTSD symptoms were equally predicted by victimization, witnessing, or hearing about community violence. Compared to children, adolescents reported a stronger relationship between externalizing behaviors and exposure, whereas children exhibited greater internalizing problems than did adolescents.

Community factors influencing child and adolescent depression: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Fowler et al (2009) identified that community violence exposure had a moderate significant overall effect on young people's internalising symptoms (d = 0.45,95% CI = [0.44,0.47], k = 82, N = 25,960). The effect size was substantially higher than that of this study (ES = 0.069, p = 0.027, k = 9, N = 7951).…”

“…There are a number of potential reasons for this. First, Fowler et al (2009) utilised unadjusted correlations from studies to calculate an overall effect size, whereas this study reported adjusted effect sizes that accounted for a large number of covariates. Second, the Stouffer method adopted in this study likely produced a more conservative estimate of the overall effect size.…”

“…There has only been one meta-analysis or review in this area. A meta-analysis that examined the impact of community violence exposure on mental health outcomes (Fowler et al, 2009) identified that community violence was associated with increased internalising symptoms.…”

Improving Outcomes for Children Exposed to Violence: Safe Start Promising Approaches

“…Child maltreatment is associated with short-term risk for depression and anxiety (Lansford et al, 2002) and behavior problems (Grogan-Kaylor et al, 2008), as well as high levels of depression, anxiety, and distress in adulthood (Lindert et al, 2014). Children exposed to domestic violence (DV) have increased risk for externalizing behavior problems, internalizing behavior problems, and trauma symptoms (Evans, Davies, and DiLillo, 2008), while childhood exposure to community violence has been shown to be strongly related to both externalizing behavior problems and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Fowler et al, 2009). In our own work examining violence exposure among a sample of families engaged with community-based service organizations, we found that exposure to multiple forms of violence strongly predicted child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems and trauma symptoms among the subsample of children with any victimization history (Hickman et al, 2013).…”

Maternal Attachment Buffers the Association Between Exposure to Violence and Youth Attitudes About Aggression

“…It has been estimated that 30%-50% of children are exposed to community violence in their lifetime and about 19% are exposed to violence in the home (Finkelhor, Turner, Ormrod, & Hamby, 2009). These youths are at increased risk for developing aggressive and antisocial behavior as well as other negative psychosocial outcomes (for reviews, see Fowler, Tompsett, Braciszewski, Jacques-Tiura, & Baltes, 2009;Kitzmann, Gaylord, Holt, & Kenny, 2003;Mazza & Overstreet, 2000). Considerable progress has been made in identifying factors that may mediate these effects (for a review, see Hamby & Grych, 2013).…”