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The Need for Resilience Enhancing and Violence Prevention

Prevention Initiatives

We tend to see children (who are exposed to violence) as statistics, but they really are not. They are somebody’s child. And if we do not do all that we can to salvage them, it is as if we are spitting in the face of God.

-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The need for an initiative that enhances resilience to problematic behaviors and prevents violence is driven, in part, by the dramatic increase in youth violence over the past decade and by the fact that this violence has become more random and more lethal. While most of this violence takes place in homes and neighborhoods, a considerable amount also occurs in and around schools. Recent media profiles of dramatic, multiple killings of students at school by their classmates have shocked the Nation. While these episodes are rare, students, teachers, parents, and other caregivers experience daily anxiety due to threats, bullying, and assaults in their schools.

Research documents that between 1989 and 1995, students felt increasingly unsafe at school and going to and from school. In 1989, 6 percent of students ages 12 to 19 "sometimes" or "most of the time" feared they would be attacked or harmed at school; by 1995, this number had risen to 9 percent. In 1989, 15 percent of students reported gangs were present in their schools; by 1995, this statistic had risen to 28 percent. A 1996 Children's Institute International Poll of American Adolescents revealed that 47 percent of all teens believed their schools were becoming more violent, 10 percent feared being shot or hurt by classmates carrying weapons to schools, and more than 20 percent were afraid to go to restrooms because these unsupervised areas were frequent sites of student victimization (National Center for Educational Statistics, 1998).

This increasing anxiety in students about the possibility of violence comes with good cause. Since the 1978 Congressional Safe School Study reported that approximately 282,000 students and 5,200 teachers were physically assaulted in secondary schools every month, the statistics on youth violence have become even more alarming. During the 1996-97 academic year, 21 percent of all public high schools and 19 percent of all public middle schools reported at least one serious violent crime -- murder, rape, other types of sexual battery, physical attack or fight with a weapon, robbery, or suicide -- to law enforcement agencies. Another 47 percent of public schools reported a less serious violent or nonviolent crime, such as a physical attack or fight without a weapon, theft or larceny, and vandalism (National Center for Educational Statistics, 1998).

Between 1984 and 1994, while the homicide rate for most other age groups fell, the homicide rate for adolescents doubled, and nonfatal violent crimes committed by adolescents increased nearly 20 percent (Elliott, Hamburg, and Williams, 1998). Fights that, in earlier years, resulted in black eyes, bloody noses, or minor bruises now often involve a serious injury or death.

Not only is there cause for concern about juveniles as perpetrators of crime, but young people are also at high risk to be victims of crime. During the 1992-93 and 1993-94 school years combined, 76 students were either murdered or committed suicide at school and an additional 29 nonstudents met with violent deaths at school. Students in urban schools were nine times more likely to be killed violently at school than were students in rural schools, and two times more likely than students in suburban schools (National Center for Education Statistics, 1998). Any school crime is too much, and violence in schools is especially disturbing.

In 1980, homicide accounted for 3.9 percent of deaths among children 5 to 14 years old, but by 1995, the homicide rate for this age group had jumped to 6.5 percent (562 deaths). Homicide now ranks third as the leading cause of death for children 10 to 14 years of age and fourth for children ages 1 to 9. Minority youth are at markedly increased risk for violent deaths. Among minority youth, especially African Americans, homicide has been the leading cause of death for both males and females between the ages of 15 and 24 for more than ten years (Hawkins, Crosby, & Hammett, 1994). Young African American females are four times more likely to die by homicide than are non-African American females, whereas young African American males are eleven times more likely to die by homicide than are non-African American males (American Psychological Association, 1993). The rate of increased risk for Hispanic youth is spiraling upward as well.

Youth suicide is an inseparable component of the final tragedy of youth violence, and it is becoming more so. From 1950 to 1980 the youth suicide rate nearly tripled. In 1980, for ages 5-14 years, suicide accounted for 142 deaths or 1.3 percent of all deaths in this age group. By 1995, suicide accounted for 337 deaths or 3.9 percent. The suicide rate among female Hispanic adolescents is of special concern. Among female high school students, the percentage of high school students who reported attempting suicide is 14.9 percent among Hispanic girls compared to 7.7 percent for the total population of high school students (Center for Disease Control, Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 1997).

While other causes of death for school-age youth (unintentional injuries, malignancies, congenital anomalies, etc.) decreased between 1980 and 1995, those for violent deaths have increased by more than 61%. The message -- we have been very successful in preventing many causes of death in youth, but not deaths from homicide and suicide (Fingerhut et al., 1992; Lowry, et al., 1995).

Among males in some high schools, as many as 21 percent reported seeing a person sexually assaulted; 82 percent reported witnessing a beating or mugging in school; 46 percent reported seeing a person attacked or stabbed with a knife; and 62 percent said they had witnessed a shooting (Singer et al., 1995).

Gay, lesbian and bi-sexual youth experience significantly more violence related behaviors at school and have increased rates of suicide attempts. In Massachusetts, Faulker & Cranston (1998) and Garofalo and colleagues (1998) utilized the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to sample high school students throughout the State. Faulker and Cranston found that sexually active homosexual and bisexual adolescents had increased rates of suicide attempts in the past year (27 percent) compared to youth with only heterosexual experience (15 percent). They found that students with the same-sex experience were significantly more likely to be threatened with a weapon, have property stolen or deliberately damaged, and not go to school because of feeling unsafe.

In addition to being perpetrators and victims of violence, children are also harmed by being witnesses to violence. In a study conducted at Boston City Hospital, 1 out of every 10 children seen in the primary care clinic had witnessed a shooting or a stabbing before the age of 6 -- 50 percent in the home, and 50 percent in the streets. The average age of these children was 2.7 years (Taylor et al., 1992). In a study of first and second graders in Washington, D.C., 45 percent said they had witnessed muggings, 31 percent said they had witnessed shootings, and 39 percent said they had seen dead bodies (Richters and Martinez, 1993). A 17-year-old African American girl from Boston told a State task force that she had attended the funerals of 16 friends ages 14 to 21 who had died by violence (American Psychological Association, 1993). Children’s exposure to violence and maltreatment is significantly associated with increased depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorders, anger, greater alcohol use, and lower school attainment (Garbarino et. al., 1992; Martinez and Richters, 1993; Singer et al., 1995).

Youth violence extracts an enormous toll on the Nation's resources. Data on the medical cost of youth violence are hard to come by, but in 1992, the total medical costs of all violence in the United States was estimated at $13.5 billion (Elders, 1994). To these figures one must add the costs of potential life lost and the psychological trauma resulting from violent acts. The level of anxiety in schools most certainly interferes with students' ability to learn and teachers' ability to teach, and these in turn interfere with children’s accomplishing necessary developmental tasks to become competent, resilient adults.

Although young people are disproportionately represented as perpetrators, victims, and witnesses of violence, it is important to consider their experiences as part of the larger picture of violence in America. The United States is in the unenviable position of being first among nations in its rate of interpersonal violence (American Psychological Association, 1993). While a $40 million initiative will not solve all of the Nation's violence problems, it can make an important impact on the lives of those children, schools, and communities that are able to form partnerships to use this funding wisely through science and evidence-based interventions that go beyond good intentions and actually do prevent violence.

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