Community Violence and Psychological Distress in South African and U.S. Children

Abstract

This study compared the relation between exposure to community violence and psychological distress in children in the United States and the R.S.A. (South Africa). Interviews were conducted with 247 children (49% male) between the ages of 8 to 13 years from five Cape Town township schools, and 162 children (49% male) ages 7 to 13 in a summer day program in St. Louis, MO. The Nadel, Spellman, and Alvarez-Canino Victimization Scale ( H. Nadel, M. Spellman, T. Alvarez-Canino, L. Lausell-Bryant, and G. Landsberg, 1996 , The cycle of violence and victimization: A study of the school-based intervention of a multidisciplinary youth prevention program, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Vol. 12, pp. 109–119) was used to measure exposure to violence and Richters, Martinez, and Valla’s (1990) instrument ( J. E. Richters, P. Martinez, and J. Valla, 1990 , Levonn: A cartooned-based structured interview for assessing young children’s distress symptoms. Rockville, MD: National Institute of Mental Health) was used to measure psychological distress. Reported exposure to community violence was generally higher in the R.S.A. sample than in the U.S. sample. However, children in the St. Louis sample reported more psychological distress. Interactions revealed that for young children and for low levels of witnessed school violence, U.S. children reported greater distress, with no sample differences at older ages, or at high levels of witnessed school violence. We suggest that children in the R.S.A. sample are experiencing less psychological distress because community violence is more normative in the R.S.A.