Psychological distress following crime victimization: An exploratory study from an agency perspective

Abstract

Deficits in recognition of suffering play a significant role in the etiology of psychological distress in crime victims. However, given the preliminary status of the literature, it seems necessary to take other factors into account as well. Starting from an agency perspective, this study explored three such factors: negative self-attributions, peritraumatic distress, and early posttraumatic emotions. More specifically, this study explored whether the association between recognition deficits and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms observed in other studies could be replicated and, if so, whether this association was mediated by negative self-attributions and would decrease in strength when taking into account the adverse roles of peritraumatic distress and early posttraumatic emotions. To address these questions, we used prospective data from 201 victims who had reported a crime to the Dutch police. Recognition deficits, negative self-attributions, peritraumatic distress, and early posttraumatic emotions were assessed within 1 month after the crime report and PTSD symptoms 1 month later. Results indicated that the association between recognition deficits and PTSD symptoms was partly mediated by negative self-attributions and that the strength of this association decreased when controlling for peritraumatic distress and early posttraumatic emotions.

Crime victimization distress, neighbourhood social cohesion and perceived police effectiveness

“…Furthermore, Posick and Policastro (2013), in a study using the 2009-2010 British Crime Survey, showed that victims of violent crimes report higher distress than those who were victims of nonviolent crimes, although those with prior victimizations report no difference in distress level compared to those without a prior victimization experience. Further illustrating the relevance of violent victimization, Kunst and Koster (2017), using a sample of crime victims in the Netherlands, found that victims of crime vary in their reports of post-traumatic stress disorder symptomology, with some evidence that violent victims report more PTSD symptoms.…”

Knowing from where to start: a plea for more and better systematic literature reviews about the effectiveness of legal rights for crime victims

“…Most crime victims return to their pre-crime level of emotional wellbeing during this period of time and therefore will not benefit from speaking during the court hearing (cf. Kunst & Koster, 2017). The small proportion of crime victims that does not return to its pre-crime level of emotional wellbeing will, on the other hand, only benefit from clinical interventions.…”

Criminal victimization, cognitive social capital and mental health in an urban region in Germany: a path analysis

“…Beyond physical injury and property loss, the experience of being a victim of a criminal act has both short-and longterm negative effects on mental health [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. Although the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are the most severe psychological sequelae of violent offenses [3,10,[12][13][14][15][16], several researchers have identified a broad spectrum of other psychological symptoms among victims of violent and nonviolent crime [2, 4, 6-10, 17, 18]. As Tan and Haining [8] showed, 86% of crime victims questioned in Sheffield (UK) reported at least one psychological symptom as a consequence of a crime experience: stress (59.7%), sleeping difficulties (39.3%), lack of confidence (37.2%), depression (30.1%) and panic attacks (24.5%).…”