Exposure to violence and nonviolent life stressors and their relations to trauma-related distress and problem behaviors among urban early adolescents.

Abstract

Objective: The impact of exposure to violence must be considered within the context of a larger constellation of nonviolent life stressors faced by youth in underresourced communities. This study examined nonviolent life stressors, two types of violence exposure, and their associations with trauma-related distress and problem behaviors. Method: Participants were a predominantly African American (80%) sample of early adolescents (Mage = 12.9 years) living in communities with high rates of crime. Structural equation models examined the extent to which nonviolent life stressors and violence exposure (witnessing violence and physical victimization) were associated with adolescents’ frequencies of trauma-related distress (reexperiencing traumatic events, avoidance, and hyperarousal) and problem behaviors (physical aggression, delinquent behavior, and substance use). Results: Nonviolent life stressors, witnessing violence, and physical victimization were each significantly associated with all three symptoms of trauma-related distress and with each of the three problem behaviors. In each case, stronger relations with trauma-related distress and problem behaviors were found for nonviolent life stressors than for physical victimization. After controlling for nonviolent life stressors, both types of violence exposure remained significantly associated with problem behaviors but differed in their patterns of association with trauma-related distress. No gender differences were found among these relations. Conclusion: These findings highlight the need to control for nonviolent life stressors when examining the impact of violence exposure on adjustment. Furthermore, mental health providers may be missing important information related to adolescents’ symptomatology if they fail to inquire about trauma-related distress when adolescents deny exposure to violent and life-threatening events.

Beliefs as Mediators of Relations Between Exposure to Violence and Physical Aggression During Early Adolescence

“…Perhaps adolescent's exposure to events over which they have little control (e.g., family members' behavior) reinforces perceptions that others are a threat, which reinforces reactively aggressive beliefs. This notion is in line with prior work that found that negative life events were more strongly related to post-traumatic stress symptoms (e.g., hyperarousal) than either witnessing or being the victim of community violence (Thompson et al, 2020). These findings also underscore the importance of accounting for concurrent negative life events when investigating the extent to which exposure to violence impacts youths' beliefs and behavior.…”

“…Participants rated their frequency of experiencing 20 stressful life events in the past 3 months on a 5point scale ranging from Never to Almost every day. Support for the construct validity of the UANLES was found in a cross-sectional study that sampled data from the same project used in the current study (Thompson et al, 2020), which found strong associations between the UANLES and latent variables representing trauma-related distress, physical aggression, delinquency, and substance use. The total score based on the average across items had an alpha of .81.…”

“…The following studies referenced in this article were based on analyses of longitudinal data collected from participants in the same 8-year project as the current study (Farrell, Thompson, Mehari, et al, 2020;Thompson et al, 2020).…”

Peer factors as mediators of relations between exposure to violence and physical aggression in middle school students in a low-income urban community.

“…No items involved witnessing or experiencing violence. The construct validity of the UANLES is supported by associations with trauma-related distress, physical aggression, delinquency, and substance use (Thompson et al, 2020). The total score was the mean rating across items.…”

“…Scores of studies have supported its construct validity based on correlations with other measures (see meta-analysis by Fowler et al, 2009). The project used a shortened version (Thompson, Coleman, et al, 2020) that had 13 witnessing violence items (e.g., “Seen someone else getting beaten up or mugged”) and seven victimization items (e.g., “Been attacked or stabbed with a knife”). Participants rated their frequency of witnessing or experiencing each item in the past 3 months on a 6-point scale ranging from Never to 20 or more times .…”