Thesis advisor: Ann W. Burgess / Purpose: The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological study was to understand the lived experience of Black emerging adults with psychotic disorders who have community violence exposure (CVE). The aims included understanding how Black emerging adults with psychotic disorders described the experience of community violence in their lives. A secondary aim was to understand how these individuals described how their experience of community violence has impacted their ability to attain goals that are consistent with emerging adulthood.Background: CVE is a public health crisis. Black emerging adults are at an increased risk of CVE and having a psychotic disorder. CVE and psychotic disorders can cause an increased burden on life. While there is research examining the impact of CVE on mental health and research examining the effects of trauma on psychotic disorders, there is limited qualitative work in Black emerging adults with psychotic disorders and CVE. Method: This study was guided by Husserl's descriptive phenomenology philosophy, and Giorgi's descriptive psychological phenomenological approach guided data collection and analysis. Eleven participants were recruited through purposive sampling. Participants had to have a psychotic disorder, report CVE, identify as Black or African-American, and be between 18 and 29. Interviews were conducted individually with each participant to understand their experiences of CVE. Using bracketing, the data was coded and analyzed. Rigor and trustworthiness were ensured by using Lincoln and Guba's criteria for credibility, confirmability, dependability, and transferability. Results: The sample consisted of eleven participants, ranging in age from 21 to 28, with an average age of 24.6. Six identified as male, four identified as female, and one participant identified as transgender and non-binary/non-conforming. All participants identified as non-Hispanic Black/African-American and had a primary psychotic disorder. Four themes were identified: (1) CVE results in a range of emotional responses, (2) CVE results in a range of behavioral responses, (3) CVE causes disruptions in life and relationships, and (4) participants aspire for a better life without a clear pathway. These four themes represent the lived experiences of CVE in these Black emerging adults who have psychotic disorders in Boston, MA. The themes shed light on the consequences CVE had in their lives. Conclusion: Utilizing descriptive phenomenology created a comprehensive understanding of the experience of the phenomenon of CVE in Black emerging adults with a psychotic disorder. The results illuminated the complex nature CVE has on their life and mental health. Future research should focus on quantitative studies to explore the impact of CVE on various health, social, and psychological outcomes. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing. / Discipline: Nursing.

Children and adolescents exposed to community violence can experience a plethora of negative outcomes including both internalizing symptoms and externalizing problems. Coping strategies can either buffer the effects of violence exposure or exacerbate negative outcomes following exposure. Given the diversity of strategies youth use to cope with violence, one unanswered question is how youth come to learn coping strategies to deal with community violence, and the roles that proximal others such as caregivers play in that process. The current study had several aims including understanding (a) how caregivers organize and conceptualize the suggestions they give to their children to cope with community violence, (b) the themes that emerge in caregivers' reasoning behind their coping suggestions, and (c) the particular qualities of the caregiver, child, family context, and community context that influence that reasoning.Maternal caregivers and their children ( N = 335 dyads) were interviewed by trained interviewers as part of a larger grant-funded study. Maternal caregivers completed a card sort task in which they had to sort 40 coping suggestions into piles based on what caregivers thought would go together. From this data, five coping suggestion clusters arose and were labeled active, positive and realistic suggestions; protection; seeking outside help; emotion regulation and control; and safe emotional expression. Following the card sort task, maternal caregivers completed a reasoning measure in which they rated the extent to which each item was a reason for why they suggested certain coping strategies to their children. This measure was subjected to confirmatory factor analysis and yielded one total factor. Caregivers answered this measure differently based on their own level of education. Regression analyses were used to examine distal influences on caregivers' reasoning behind their coping suggestions to their children; these analyses were conducted separately by caregiver education. The most important determinant of caregivers' reasoning was their own coping style, specifically active and social support coping. Caregivers did not take into account more distal factors such as qualities of their children or neighborhood. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for intervention with caregivers in communities where community violence exposure is prevalent.

Epidemiological research indicates that parents report lower levels of youths’ exposure to violence than youth self-report, and theory suggests that such discrepancies reflect parents’ lack of knowledge of youth victimization and impaired ability to help children cope with victimization. This study extends prior research examining the implications of parent-youth informant discrepancies on ratings of victimization. Latent class analysis (LCA) was employed to identify groups of dyads distinguished by patterns of parent and youth report of victimization, uncovering heterogeneity based on patterns of parent-youth ratings of victimization. Analyses examined how latent classes reflecting parent-youth agreement on victimization were related to adjustment (i.e., depression, aggression, and delinquency) concurrently and over time. Participants were youths ages 10-15 years and their mothers (N=1,339 dyads) from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN). Parent and youth reports of six victimization events were used as the observed indicators in latent class analysis. Youths and parents completed parallel measures of adjustment (anxiety/depression and delinquency subscales of the Child Behavior Checklist and Youth Self Report) concurrently and at follow-up assessment (~2.5 years). This study compared three classes of youths: (a) Low Victimization (77.0%), (b) Youth > Parent (13.5%), and (c) Parent > Youth (8.1%). Concurrently, the class in which youths reported more victimization than parents (Youth > Parent) demonstrated higher levels of youth-reported depression, delinquency, and aggression. Longitudinally, however, this was not the case. In fact, the Parent >Youth class was more likely to show increased maladjustment, relative to the Youth > Parent class. Specifically, these youths showed increases in both youth- and parent- reported delinquent behavior, as well as parent-report of youth anxious/depressed behavior. In the absence of a gold standard to determine which informant is over- or under- reporting victimization, a person-centered approach can offer a unique framework for integrating informant reports. Moreover, discrepant perspectives can offer useful information for understanding the effects of victimization, as well as implications for prevention and intervention.

There is a growing body of research suggesting that the presence of psychopathic traits, and more specifically, callous-unemotional traits in youth, may constitute a distinct developmental pathway to aggressive behavior. However, ethnic groups are understudied in this literature such that it is unclear whether the correlates of psychopathic traits (i.e., violence, aggression, emotional processing deficits) are equally associated with these traits across different ethnic groups. Also, most theories on the development of psychopathy have provided biologically-based explanations for the cognitive-affective deficits that are considered to be core features of psychopathy. However, research suggests that exposure to adverse contextual environments is also associated with emotional processing deficits and could be important in the etiology of psychopathic traits. The current study examined callous-unemotional traits, emotional processing using the emotional pictures dot-probe task, and exposure to adverse contextual environments (i.e., community violence, abuse) in sixty African American and twenty Caucasian detained boys (n = 80). The results of the current study revealed that aggression, delinquency, and violence were associated with psychopathic traits and this did not differ across ethnic groups. Also, there was an interaction between psychopathic traits and aggression that supported past research and indicated that aggressive youth high on psychopathic traits showed a reduced responsiveness to distressing stimuli but aggressive youth low on psychopathic traits showed an enhanced responsivity to distressing stimuli. The association with contextual factors revealed that exposure to community violence was correlated with both psychopathic traits and emotional response to distress stimuli. There was also an interaction between psychopathic traits and exposure to community violence that was similar to the interaction found between psychopathic traits and aggression. That is, psychopathy was inversely related to emotional responses to distressing stimuli, but only for youth high on exposure to violence. Both of these interactions suggested that there was a group of youth high on callous-unemotional traits that also showed strong emotional responses to distressing stimuli. Analyses indicated that this group of youth experienced greater levels of abuse, consistent with research showing that abused children tend to be hypervigilant to emotional stimuli but may also show deficits in empathy. These findings suggest that there may be multiple developmental pathways to psychopathy and have important implications for how treatment approaches should be uniquely tailored to the needs of youth in each pathway.

The current study examines associations between community violence exposure (CVE) and internalizing and externalizing symptoms. The emotional desensitization hypothesis states that moderate levels of CVE will be associated with increased internalizing symptoms, whereas high levels of CVE will be associated with decreases in internalizing distress. The current study extends prior research by examining whether patterns of emotional desensitization differ based on the route of exposure – either being personally victimized or witnessing community violence. Further, associations examined the influence of interpersonal proximity to the victims of violence – that is, whether individuals are victims themselves (most proximal), witness violence against known individuals, or witness violence against strangers (least proximal). Participants include 714 undergraduate students (Mage = 20.5 years, SD = 3.9) who completed an online survey of CVE, internalizing and externalizing outcomes, and cognitions supporting aggression. Results revealed significant moderation by interpersonal proximity. Specifically, curvilinear associations between CVE and internalizing symptoms, reflecting emotional desensitization, were stronger at lower levels of proximity, whereas positive linear associations emerged at higher levels of proximity. Associations between CVE and more externalizing behaviors were stronger at low, compared to high, levels of proximity. Internalizing symptoms and cognitions supporting aggression partially mediated the association between CVE and externalizing behaviors. Further, latent profile analysis revealed that distinct groups of individuals were classified based on cumulative frequency of CVE and types of violent experiences. Thus, route of exposure, relationship to the victims of violence, and type of violence are each salient characteristics of CVE that may relate differentially to adjustment.

Prosocial behavior during adolescence is consistently associated with a myriad of positive outcomes including fewer risk-taking behaviors and greater positive affect. Although limited, there is some literature that suggests prosocial behavior is an important protective factor in attenuating the effects of stressful life events such as exposure to community violence. Unfortunately work examining prosocial behaviors in African American adolescents is very sparse. The present study examined the moderating role of altruism, a specific form of prosocial behavior, on relationships between exposure to violence and negative mental health outcomes in a sample of 207 African American adolescents (136 females, 71 males). Participant’s age ranged from 13 to 18 (M = 15.78, SD = 1.19). Results indicated that boys and girls engaged in similar levels of altruistic behaviors, but these behaviors were especially important in moderating the impact of community violence on antisocial behaviors for boys. The findings suggest that encouraging altruistic behaviors in boys may be critical in improving outcomes for adolescent males developing in violent ecologies. / acase@tulane.edu

<p>The main aim of the current study is to examine the relationship between community violence exposure and the development of psychopathology and examine the relationship between community violence exposure and other types of trauma, that is, childhood trauma and stressful life events. It was hypothesised that exposure to community violence will have a high correlation with development of psychological disorders such as mood and anxiety and psychotic disorders. The main study employed a quantitative research design in order to determine the relationship between PTSD in children and adolescents. The current study used secondary data to measure the correlation between exposure to community violence and the development of psychopathology. The data for this study was collected from 132 consecutive referrals between the ages of 13 to 19 (mean age = 15.4, SD = 1.6) from a youth stress clinic at a university in the Western Cape. Findings indicated that community violence prevalence was higher than previous South African studies but lower compared to American studies. There was generally a high prevalence of PTSD and major depressive disorder (MDD) in this sample compared to previous South African studies. An unexpected outcome was that even though there was a high prevalence of PTSD, there was no relationship between community violence exposure and PTSD in this sample, rather, community violence exposure was related to MDD. Furthermore, MDD and not PTSD was related to experiences of childhood trauma. Stressful life events were related to acute stress disorder (ASD).</p>

<p>Violence is considered to be one of the most critical and threatening global problems plaguing the world today, leaving a trail of devastating consequences to societies, economies, cultures, families and individuals (Desjarlais &amp / Kleinman, 1997). Adolescents who grow up in a context of violence learn distorted ways of thinking, acting, living and interacting. Aggressive tendencies and violent behaviour become internalised and adopted as acceptable ways to resolve conflict situations. Chronic, continuous exposure to violence results in physical, psychological and emotional disturbances, such as depression, anxiety, lowered self-confidence, sleep disturbances, decreased attention and concentration spans. This study addressed the form of violence known as community violence, i.e. violence that children experience within their communities (either as witnesses or as victims). This study investigated the effects of this negative environmental experience and investigated potential mediating and moderating variables that could influence the harmful effects of such experiences. The variables considered as mediating and/or moderating variables were social support and self-esteem. The theoretical framework adopted for this study was Bronfennbrenner&rsquo / s Bioecological Systems theory.</p>

<p>Violence is considered to be one of the most critical and threatening global problems plaguing the world today, leaving a trail of devastating consequences to societies, economies, cultures, families and individuals (Desjarlais &amp / Kleinman, 1997). Adolescents who grow up in a context of violence learn distorted ways of thinking, acting, living and interacting. Aggressive tendencies and violent behaviour become internalised and adopted as acceptable ways to resolve conflict situations. Chronic, continuous exposure to violence results in physical, psychological and emotional disturbances, such as depression, anxiety, lowered self-confidence, sleep disturbances, decreased attention and concentration spans. This study addressed the form of violence known as community violence, i.e. violence that children experience within their communities (either as witnesses or as victims). This study investigated the effects of this negative environmental experience and investigated potential mediating and moderating variables that could influence the harmful effects of such experiences. The variables considered as mediating and/or moderating variables were social support and self-esteem. The theoretical framework adopted for this study was Bronfennbrenner&rsquo / s Bioecological Systems theory.</p>

<p>The main aim of the current study is to examine the relationship between community violence exposure and the development of psychopathology and examine the relationship between community violence exposure and other types of trauma, that is, childhood trauma and stressful life events. It was hypothesised that exposure to community violence will have a high correlation with development of psychological disorders such as mood and anxiety and psychotic disorders. The main study employed a quantitative research design in order to determine the relationship between PTSD in children and adolescents. The current study used secondary data to measure the correlation between exposure to community violence and the development of psychopathology. The data for this study was collected from 132 consecutive referrals between the ages of 13 to 19 (mean age = 15.4, SD = 1.6) from a youth stress clinic at a university in the Western Cape. Findings indicated that community violence prevalence was higher than previous South African studies but lower compared to American studies. There was generally a high prevalence of PTSD and major depressive disorder (MDD) in this sample compared to previous South African studies. An unexpected outcome was that even though there was a high prevalence of PTSD, there was no relationship between community violence exposure and PTSD in this sample, rather, community violence exposure was related to MDD. Furthermore, MDD and not PTSD was related to experiences of childhood trauma. Stressful life events were related to acute stress disorder (ASD).</p>