Impact of Chronic Multi-Context Violence on Post-Traumatic Stress and Aggression Among Israeli and Palestinian Youth

We examined combined effects of chronic exposure to school, family, community, and interethnic-political violence encountered by Israeli and Palestinian youth. Our goal was to estimate the impacts of cross-contextual exposure to violence during childhood/early adolescence on post-traumatic stress (PTS) symptoms and aggressive behavior in late adolescence/young adulthood.

Participants were children and one of their caregivers first recruited in 2008 for an initial three yearly waves of surveys from three age cohorts (starting ages 8, 11, 14); a randomly selected reduced sample of original participants was drawn in 2014 to yield four-wave samples of Israeli Jewish (N = 162) and Palestinian Arab (N = 400) youth; sex of child was evenly distributed across cohorts as well as ethnic groups. At all waves, youth and/or their caregivers reported on youths' exposure to violence. Youth self-reported PTS symptoms, and youth and caregivers provided ratings for a composite measure of aggression at all waves.

Regressions controlling social demographics and baseline criterion scores showed significant prediction to both PTS and aggression from chronic, multi-contextual exposures. For aggression, exposure to persistent interethnic-political violence was a significant predictor. For PTS, exposures to persistent interethnic-political and family violence were significant predictors.

Chronic exposure to violence across multiple contexts - particularly persistent interethnic-political violence - from childhood through very early adulthood amplifies aggressive behavior as well as post-traumatic stress. Researchers should incorporate indicators of chronicity and cross-contextual exposure into studies on the effects of violence in the social environment.