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Abstract
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The Children's National Medical Center is located in the inner-city area of Washington, DC. As is nationally now well publicized, the drug-related violence in Washington has earned the area the dubious title of "murder capital of the world." Our outpatient child and adolescent psychiatry clinic at Children's Hospital provides walk-in services during daytime hours, Monday through Friday. Access to services is available at other times through the emergency room.
VioLit summary:
OBJECTIVE:
The intent of this article by Benoit was to describe the common themes emerging from six cases at a children's medical center which identified psychiatric morbidity as a problem closely associated to violence.
METHODOLOGY:
The author employed a non-experimental design by describing six adolescents who were treated at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, some time in the early 1990s. The author then described the special dilemma associated with psychological victimization and widespread violence.
FINDINGS/DISCUSSION:
The adolescents ranged in age from 5 to 19 and they each demonstrated a combination of maladaptive behaviors such as sadness, suicidal tendencies, an inability to cooperate with peers, paranoia, vigilantism, obsession with guns and violence, excessive fright, sadism, irritability, sleeplessness, and loss of appetite. The author identified the chronic recurrence of community violence as a dilemma unique to this type of post traumatic stress syndrome; in cases of physical or sexual abuse the victim was usually removed from the situation for treatment, in cases of natural disaster the likelihood of an immediate recurrence was low, but in an ongoing culture of violence, treatment could not include full intervention or the victim's mastery over the trauma.
AUTHOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS:
The author identified primary prevention as the most important element of future endeavors because therapeutic intervention was only moderately helpful in the best cases, but not curative.
(CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado)
KW - District of Columbia
KW - Urban Environment
KW - Urban Violence
KW - Urban Youth
KW - Juvenile Witness
KW - Juvenile Patient
KW - Child Patient
KW - Child Witness
KW - Witnessing Community Violence
KW - Psychological Victimization Effects
KW - Witnessing Violence Effects
KW - Exposure to Violence
KW - Mental Health Patient
KW - Mental Health Institution
KW - Witness Treatment
KW - Child Treatment
KW - Juvenile Treatment
KW - Witness Adjustment
KW - Emotional Adjustment
KW - Child Adjustment
KW - Juvenile Adjustment
Language: en |