Title
Prevalence of Exposure to Complex Trauma and Community Violence and Their Associations With Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms
Date Issued
01 January 2021
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Publisher(s)
SAGE Publications Inc.
Abstract
Studies about trauma often tend to focus on abuse and neglect. However important, these studies may neglect the importance of the broader community context that is often associated with trauma, and complex trauma (CT) in particular. This study aimed to investigate the effects of CT (defined in terms of experiencing abuse and/or neglect occurring in the context of relationships with caregivers), and of broader environmental adversity (i.e., exposure to community violence), in a sample of adolescents (N = 218) from a severely disadvantaged district of Lima, Peru. The study had two aims: (a) to assess the prevalence of CT and its associations with internalizing and externalizing symptoms in these adolescents and (b) to investigate the associations between community violence and both internalizing and externalizing symptoms over and above the effects of CT. In total, 39.4% of the adolescents reported at least one type of moderate to severe trauma. There was a clear association between CT and both internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Ordinal logistic regressions showed that children who were exposed to one or more traumatic experiences were more likely to score within a higher range of internalizing and externalizing symptoms than children with no history of trauma. Finally, exposure to community violence was an important predictor of symptomatology beyond the effects of CT.
Start page
843
End page
861
Volume
36
Issue
February 1
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Psicología
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85042077677
PubMed ID
Source
Journal of Interpersonal Violence
Resource of which it is part
Journal of Interpersonal Violence
ISSN of the container
08862605
Source funding
KU Leuven
Sponsor(s)
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research received funding from the “Fonds Dr. Pierre Vereecken” from the University of Leuven, Belgium.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus