Protective factors for adolescents experiencing community violence: Familial characteristics as moderators of the relationship between exposure to violence and the development of psychopatholog

Research clearly demonstrates that when inner-city youth are exposed to violence in their community they are at heightened risk for developing psychopathology; however, there is very little work investigating the potential protective factors in these youth's lives that might help buffer the detrimental effects of violence exposure on their development. This study examined the relationship between exposure to community violence and the development of psychopathology in adolescence, as well as the protective effects of various familial characteristics (i.e. parental monitoring/supervision and positive parenting). Participants included 181 African American adolescent-mother dyads, living in a low SES neighborhood in a large, Midwestern city. Specifically, this study investigated the role of the aforementioned familial characteristics in moderating the relationship between both witnessing and experiencing community violence, and the subsequent development of psychopathology in adolescence. We hypothesized that higher levels of positive familial characteristics (i.e. parental supervision and positive parenting) would buffer the negative effects of having been exposed to community violence. Findings indicated that both witnessing and experiencing community violence were associated with increased levels of externalizing behaviors. However, only direct victimization, not witnessing, was associated with increased levels of depressive symptoms, and neither were associated with levels of PTSD symptoms. Neither lax parental supervision nor positive parenting buffered the effects of having witnessed or experienced community violence on externalizing, depression, or PTSD. However, positive parenting (both child and parent reports) was associated with fewer externalizing behaviors at both high and low levels of witnessing and/or experiencing community violence. Thus, based on multiple reports positive parenting emerged as a resource factor for youth in the face of community violence.