Citation

Overstreet S, Mazza J. Sch. Psychol. Q. 2003; 18(1): 66-87.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1521/scpq.18.1.66.20874

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Community violence has emerged as a major risk factor for the development of mental health problems in children and adolescents. If mental health providers are to meet the needs of children and communities dealing with community violence, then they will need to integrate principles from various subdisciplines in psychology (e.g., developmental psychology, school psychology, developmental psychopathology) as well as disciplines outside of psychology (e.g., sociology, public health, medicine) to understand fully the developmental impact of exposure to community violence. The development of such a model is necessary to identify the pathways, risk, and protective factors on which prevention and intervention programs can be built. The goal of this article is to present an ecological-transactional model of community violence as a conceptual framework for understanding the existing literature and for guiding future research on community violence exposure and child development.