The Psychology Of Teen Violence And Victimization

This compilation of original essays does more than just illuminate the serious problem of teen violence and victimization; it also provides resources that parents and teachers can use to address issues of violence with their teens and make a difference."

This compilation of original essays does more than just illuminate the serious problem of teen violence and victimization; it also provides resources that parents and teachers can use to address issues of violence with their teens and make a difference. While it's widely known that hate crimes represent a serious issue among today's adolescent population, most parents—and perhaps even some educators—may be unaware that gender-based violence is the most prevalent type of hate crime committed by and experienced by teens, and that adolescent girls are exposed to more violence than boys. A complete understanding of the nature of the problem is fundamental to curtailing problems like cyberbullying and sexual harrassment. The Psychology of Teen Violence and Victimization is a two-volume set that fills a gap in the current literature on teen violence by addressing the incidence, psychological explanations, and impact of all forms of teen violence. The author—a psychologist who has focused upon interpersonal problems centered on violence, harassment, and gender—provides in-depth discussion of the various types of violence committed by and against teens. The set offers actionable prevention strategies for parents and teachers as well as individuals involved in community programs. Special attention is given to the impact of violence on adolescents' emotional and physical health, interpersonal relationships, career development, and self-concept.

This compilation of original essays does more than just illuminate the serious problem of teen violence and victimization; it also provides resources that parents and teachers can use to address issues of violence with their teens and make a difference."

There is an increasing appreciation of the interconnections among all forms of violence. These interconnections have critical implications for conducting research that can produce valid conclusions about the causes and consequences of abuse, maltreatment, and trauma. The accumulated data on co-occurrence also provide strong evidence that prevention and intervention should be organized around the full context of individuals’ experiences, not narrowly defined subtypes of violence. Managing the flood of new research and practice innovations is a challenge, however. New means of communication and integration are needed to meet this challenge, and the Web of Violence is intended to contribute to this process by serving as a concise overview of the conceptual and empirical work that form a basis for understanding the interconnections across forms of violence throughout the lifespan. It also offers ideas and directions for prevention, intervention, and public policy. A number of initiatives are emerging to integrate the findings on co-occurrence into research and action. The American Psychological Association established a new journal, Psychology of Violence, which is a forum for research on all types of violence. Sherry Hamby is the founding editor and John Grych is associate editor and co-editor of a special issue on the co-occurrence of violence in 2012. Dr. Hamby also is a co-investigator of the National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV), which has drawn attention to polyvictimization. Polyvictimization is a focus of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Defending Childhood Initiative and has recently been featured in calls for grant proposals by the Office of Victims of Crime and National Institutes for Justice.

This book examines bullying and victimization at different points across the lifespan, from childhood through old age. It examines bullying at disparate ecological levels, such as within the family, in school, on the internet, at the work place, and between countries. This volume explores the connections between variations of bullying that manifests in multiple forms of violence and victimization. It also describes how bullying dynamics can affect individuals, families, and communities. Using a universal definition of bullying dynamics, chapters discuss bullying roles during different developmental periods across the lifespan. In addition, chapters review each role in the bullying dynamic and discuss behavioral health consequences, prevention strategies, and ways to promote restorative justice to decrease the impact of toxic bullying behaviors on society. The book concludes with recommendations for possible solutions and prevention suggestions. Topics featured in this book include: Mental health and the neurobiological impacts of bullying. The prevalence of bystanders and their behavior in bullying dynamics. The relationship between traditional bullying and cyberbullying. How bullying causes trauma. Sibling violence and bullying. Bullying in intimate partner relationships. Elder abuse as a form of bullying. Why bullying is a global public health concern. Bullying and Victimization Across the Lifespan is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, clinicians, and related professionals as well as graduate students in clinical child, school, and developmental psychology, social work, public health, and family studies as well as anthropology, social psychology, sociology, and criminology.

This book places youth violence within a Routine Activity Ecological Framework. Youth violence, specifically youth exposure to community violence and youth perpetration of violent behaviors, occur within various contexts. Ahlin and Antunes situate their discussion of youth violence within an ecological framework, identifying how it is nested within four mesosystem layers: community, family, peers and schools, and youth characteristics. Contextualized using an ecological framework, the Routine Activity Theory and Lifestyles perspective (RAT/LS) are well suited to guide an examination of youth violence risk and protective factors across the four layers. Drawing on scholarship that explores predictors and consequences of youth violence, the authors apply RAT/LS theory to explain how community, family, peers, schools, and youth characteristics influence youth behavior. Each layer of the ecological framework unfolds to reveal the latest scholarship and contextualizes how concepts of RAT/LS, specifically the motivated offender, target suitability, and guardianship, can be applied at each level. This book also highlights the mechanisms and processes that contribute to youth exposure to and involvement in violence by exploring factors examined in the literature as protective and risk factors of youth violence. Youth violence occurs in context, and, as such, the understanding of multilevel predictors and preventive measures against it can be situated within an RAT/LS ecological framework. This work links theory to extant research. Ahlin and Antunes demonstrate how knowledge of youth violence can be used to develop a robust theoretical foundation that can inform policy to improve neighborhoods and youth experiences within their communities, families, and peers and within their schools while acknowledging the importance of individual characteristics. This monograph is essential reading for those interested in youth violence, juvenile delinquency, and juvenile justice research and anyone dedicated to preventing crime among youths.

This book uses life-course longitudinal data collected from a national probability sample of respondents over a span of nearly three decades to examine the impact of multiple forms of exposure to violence in adolescence on a broad range of outcomes in adulthood. The forms of adolescent exposure to violence include general violence victimization, parental physical abuse, witnessing parental violence, and exposure to neighborhood violence. The adult outcomes include adult educational attainment, employment, marital status, income and wealth, mental health, life satisfaction, illicit and problem substance use, general violence victimization and perpetration, intimate partner violence victimization and perpetration, and arrest. The results demonstrate the complex pattern of how the different forms of exposure to violence in adolescence have varying effects on different types of adult outcomes, and matter differently for females and males. Based on these results, implications for theory, policy, and future research are considered.