Eight crime factor model for youths in Mexican violence contexts

Abstract

The impact of youth violent interactions promoted by: collective fear, and individual coping strategies: youth coping mechanisms, posttraumatic stress traits, measured individually but considered at a collective level and identified as PTSD traits in a community, and social vulnerability as predictors of multifactorial high violence social contexts, are the main psychological mechanisms that Diagnostic on Vulnerability Effectiveness model (DOVE-8) consider as multifactorial factors underpinning cycles of violence, the priority for this diagnostic model examine abovementioned constructs and their association in youth’s efficacy, as a collective outcome, DOVE-8 analysis model states that teenagers dealing with specific or widespread fear in violent scenarios, develop certain coping strategies, that furthermore strengthen collective fear. Gradually, an impact on life quality is established, promoting unhealthier mental states and poor social relationships, that consolidate a collective inefficacy, in addition, particular associations were found between high impact crimes and above cited main constructs, that provide a research tool to provide insight into: main fears, coping mechanisms and youth outcomes translated into social ineffectiveness such as: low cohesion, tolerance, participation and respect to law and social norms. Youth cope can be explained by cognitive and physical strategies. Several traits of posttraumatic stress can promote physiological arousal, followed by emotional or affective coping at violent stimuli or criminal events and, all abovementioned become predictors of crime fear, also known as social anxiety, especially in youth communities with high socio economic and cultural vulnerability. Confronting cognitively a context of violence triggers a rise on risk perception, basically, in privileged- low vulnerability groups with crucial health implications, unnecessary high expenses to cope with crime expectancies in private security at a household level, and stressful fearful coping strategies such as: information distortion, discriminatory processes, low social cohesion, fear based reactions to confront crime, a factor that seen at a glance, might diminish criminal widespread or emotional fear, undoubtedly, this fear type was not found in high vulnerability groups under study. Risk perception was a specific fear commonly found in youth groups with low vulnerability. Both diverse type of fears: specific (risk perception) and widespread fear (social anxiety /crime fear), gather together in a heterogeneous youth community, diminishing collective effectiveness: promoting poor cohesion, low tolerance, discrimination processes, lower levels of social agency, recurrent violent cycles arousals in the community, among other consequences.