The Effects of Initial Community Violence Exposure on Future Exposure in Urban Youth

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Developmental Psychopathology

Abstract

Background: Youth exposure to community violence can lead to many years of continued distress, with approximately 70% of low-income, urban youth reporting victimization (Cooley-Strickland et al., 2009) and 50% to 96% reporting witnessing (Zimmerman & Messner, 2014). Exposure to community violence can lead to both internalizing and externalizing symptoms and more specific impacts on future developmental trajectories (McDonald, Deatrick, Kassam-Adams & Richmond, 2011) including post-traumatic stress and juvenile delinquency. Additionally, both males and females may experience violence at different rates (Gibson, Morris & Beaver, 2009; Cooley-Strickland et al., 2009), and process and react to violent experiences differently (Foster, Kuperminc & Price, 2004; Cooley-Strickland, 2009). Understanding predictors of community violence exposure in these populations is less well understood.
Current Study: This study aims to explore the pathways between initial exposure to violence and continued exposure to violence over time. The relationship between exposure to violence as a predictor and exposure to community violence (ECV) as an outcome is hypothesized to be mediated by posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and juvenile delinquent (JD) behaviors and moderated by gender. See figures.
Method: A total of 152 self-identified, African-American, 6th grade students from six-different Chicago public schools, located in high crime, high poverty areas, completed three-year participation in this study (M= 11.65, 59% female). After collecting student assents and parent consents, all participants completed self-report surveys at baseline, then 12 months and 24 months after the initial questionnaires were administered.
Results: PROCESS macro software for SPSS was used to run moderated serial mediation (model number 85; Hayes, 2018); the longitudinal associations controlled for baseline and time 2 outcomes. For all witnessing models, JDB at Time 3 significantly predicted ECV-witnessing at Time 3 (p= 0.0007, 95% CI [0.0628, .2294]) for the whole sample. Gender moderated several paths. For girls, more ECV-witnessing at Time 1 led to increased PTSS at Time 2 (p= 0.0093, 95% CI [0.0063, 0.0439]) and increased JDB at Time 3 (p= 0.0064, 95% CI [0.1907, 1.1461]) (Figure 1). For the PTSS subscales models, among girls, more ECV-witnessing at Time 1 led to increased PTSS-hyperarousal (p= 0.0177, 95% CI [0.0043, 0.0446]), and increased PTSS-intrusion symptoms (p= 0.0074, 95% CI [0.0080, 0.0506]) at Time 2. Posthoc analyses confirmed these findings; analyses also indicated that PTSS –hyperarousal at Time 2 significantly predicted ECV-witnessing at Time 3 for girls only subsample (p= 0.0412, 95% CI [-5.1017, -0.1069]). ECV-witnessing at Time 1 significantly predicted JDB at Time 3 (p= 0.0003, 95% CI [0.3926, 1.2849]) which significantly predicted ECV-witnessing at Time 3 (p= 0.0030, 95% CI [0.0691, 0.3272]) (Figure 2).
Conclusion: This study suggests that witnessing community violence contributes to post traumatic stress and delinquency which in turn contributes to more witnessing among young adolescent girls two years later. The findings of this study help to identify prominent psychosocial problem areas in young people as a result of being a witness of community violence.

Authors

• Kaleigh Wilkins, Loyola University Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Maryse H Richards, Loyola University Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author