Violence Hurts Children
Emotionally, Academically
Excerpt By Melissa Schorr, Reuters Health

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Young, inner-city children who have witnessed episodes of violence are more likely to miss days of school and get poor grades, researchers report.

And this academic performance may reflect the emotional toll violence takes on children.

``Children with the higher exposure to violence were exhibiting more depression and anxiety than children with lower exposure,'' Dr. Hallam Hurt of the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, told Reuters Health. ``If you're more anxious and depressed, it's not a bright matrix to the future.''

The researchers evaluated 119 inner-city, African-American children at the age of 7, measuring their exposure to violent acts, as well as their current school performance, behavior and self-esteem levels.

The children were asked about any violence they had witnessed in person, and were instructed not to report incidents they had seen on television or had been told about.

The researchers report the findings in the December issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

The study revealed that, overall, these young children had already witnessed a significant amount of violence. One third of the 7-year-olds said they had seen someone get shot, and 10% had seen someone in their own home get shot or stabbed. Three-quarters had at least heard a gun being fired.

Moreover, many showed signs of depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. For example, 32% of the children said they were sometimes or often afraid something bad would happen if they went outside to play, while 61% worried they could get killed or die. One fifth of the children said that sometimes they wished they were dead.

And the higher the children's exposure to violence, the greater the effect on their well-being.

``The thing that was equally concerning,'' Hurt said, ``was that the caregivers didn't recognize this. Children may not report things to their parents. They may not want the caregiver to be aware of what they've seen.''

The researchers also found that students who had witnessed violent episodes were more likely to miss school and have a lower grade point average than students reporting less exposure to violence.

These findings do not necessarily demonstrate that witnessing violence causes poor school performance, according to Hurt.

``If you have these issues you're trying to deal with, you might be distracted in school and not do as well,'' Hurt noted. ''These children are holding inside some reasonably high emotional distress that we're not tapping into. We need to talk to the child and explore their feelings of anxiety.''

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 2001;155:1351-1356.

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