Community violence exposure and substance use: cross-cultural and gender perspectives

Sandra Löfving-Gupta,Mimmie Willebrand,Vladislav Ruchkin,Mary Schwab-Stone,Roman Koposov,Marek Blatný,Michal Hrdlička

doi:10.1007/s00787-017-1097-5

Abstract

The negative effects of community violence exposure on child and adolescent mental health are well documented and exposure to community violence has been linked both to a number of internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Our aim was, therefore, to investigate cross-cultural and gender differences in the relationship between community violence exposure and substance abuse. A self-report survey was conducted among 10,575, 12–18 year old adolescents in three different countries, Czech Republic (N = 4537), Russia (N = 2377) and US (N = 3661). We found that in all three countries both substance use and problem behavior associated with it increased similarly along with severity of violence exposure and this association was not gender-specific. It was concluded that in spite of the differences in the levels of violence exposure and substance use cross-culturally and by gender, the pattern of their association is neither culturally nor gender bound.

Highlights

The rates of community violence exposure have declined since the peak in the 90s, it is still regarded as a “major public health problem” [1]
The results obtained have been largely similar. This cross-sectional, cross-cultural study found a significant relation between exposure to community violence on the one side, and alcohol and substance use on the other side, and this association seems to be robust across culture and gender
After controlling for the subjects own level of violent behavior and for emotional problems, levels of alcohol and substance use increased along with increased level of violence exposure. This association seems in some ways to be gender-specific, the pattern of these associations seems to hold in all three cultures

Summary

Introduction

The rates of community violence exposure have declined since the peak in the 90s, it is still regarded as a “major public health problem” [1]. WHO has declared violence” a leading worldwide health problem” [2], and yet, most research regarding community violence exposure has focused on high-risk youth in the United States [3,4,5] giving a rather narrow and perhaps, even skewed picture of the consequences of violence exposure. It has been suggested that the effects of community violence can be long-lasting and can impact psycho-social functioning of youth in years after the exposure took place, which has been demonstrated by a number of longitudinal

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion