(Press-News.org) DURHAM, N.C. -- Even short-term exposure to political violence may have long-lasting effects on children's adjustment and behavior, says a new study by a team of researchers from Kenya, Italy and the United States.
Intense violence followed the contested Kenyan presidential election of December 2007. More than a year later, children who were exposed to the violence showed increased delinquent and aggressive behaviors, including such problem behaviors as bullying, vandalism, stealing and skipping school, said study author Ann T. Skinner of the Duke University Center for Child and Family Policy.
Skinner works with a team of researchers at Duke and abroad who study parenting in different cultures. By chance, Skinner and her colleagues had just begun collecting data in Kisumu, Kenya, when post-election attacks erupted, tearing the city apart.
"The violence split neighborhoods and classrooms along ethnic lines," Skinner said. "In school, children who had sat side by side one week were suddenly being told they were enemies."
More than 1,200 people died as a result of political violence in Kenya that January after the election. Gunfire and death were suddenly so common that in a survey of 100 Kisumu youths and their mothers, more than half of mothers reported seeing a dead body, and 95 percent of children heard gunshots. More than a year later, children who were exposed to the bloodshed displayed a range of increased problem behaviors.
Previous studies have linked childhood exposure to chronic violence to adjustment problems ranging from academic failure to increased aggression. The pattern has been found in dangerous inner-city neighborhoods in the U.S., and in countries such as Northern Ireland that have endured years of political violence.
Shorter episodes of intense violence have received less scrutiny, Skinner said. The new findings suggest that when political violence erupts, clinicians could play an important role in the aftermath.
"The assumption may have been that after violence subsides, children are no longer affected," Skinner said. "That may not be true. Instead, we may need to assess children clinically for increased aggression and other behaviors that could benefit from treatment."
###
The study was supported by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (NIH Grant No. RO1-HD054805)
CITATION: "Childrearing Violence and Child Adjustment Following Exposure to Kenyan Post-Election Violence," Ann T. Skinner, Paul Oburu, Jennifer E. Lansford and Dario Bacchini, Psychology of Violence, July 1, 2013.
After the shooting, political violence lives on in kids' behavior problems
2013-07-01
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Photos on social media used to measure aesthetic value of Cornish landscape
2013-07-01
A new method designed to measure the aesthetic value of ecosystems has been applied in Cornwall. According to the research findings, Cornwall's beautiful rugged coastline has been measured to have the highest aesthetic value. Researchers at the University of Exeter's Environment and Sustainability Institute developed the method, which uses computational social science to count photos uploaded to an online photo-sharing site.
The researchers found that areas most highly valued for their aesthetic attributes generate hotspots of photographer activity. Areas in which large ...
Harvard and USC scientists show how DHA resolves inflammation
2013-07-01
Bethesda, MD—Chronic inflammation is a major factor in a wide range of problems from arthritis to cardiovascular disease, and DHA (found in fish oil) is known to temper this problem. A new research report appearing in the July 2013 issue of The FASEB Journal, helps explain why DHA is important in reducing inflammation, and provides an important lead to finding new drugs that will help bring people back to optimal health. Specifically, researchers found that macrophages (a type of white blood cell) use DHA to produce "maresins," which serve as the "switch" that turns inflammation ...
CWRU researchers trace inner-city women's health issues to childhood traumas
2013-07-01
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have traced chronic health problems of adult inner-city women to traumas from childhood abuse and neglect.
The latest findings, reported in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect, complement prior studies of other socioeconomic groups and provide further evidence linking childhood mistreatment to serious health issues as adults, said Meeyoung O. Min, assistant professor of social work at Case Western Reserve's Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse funded the study.
Min's ...
Getting kids to eat their veggies: A new approach to an age-old problem
2013-07-01
Every parent has a different strategy for trying to get his or her kid to eat more vegetables, from growing vegetables together as a family to banning treats until the dinner plate is clean. New research suggests that teaching young children an overarching, conceptual framework for nutrition may do the trick.
The new findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that a conceptual framework encourages children to understand why eating a variety of foods is ideal and also causes them to eat more vegetables by ...
Motivations for gambling, sexual motivation and satisfaction, and impulsive shoppers
2013-07-01
Reacting to terrorist groups: Injustice leads to anger, power to fear
Perceptions really matter when it comes to how we react to terrorist threats. Across two studies, researchers found that the more a terrorist group is seen as unjust, the more anger we feel, whereas the more the group is seen as powerful, the more fearful we become. Surveying 1,072 Americans in one study about fictional terrorist groups, the researchers found that fear from powerful portrayals led participants to support offensive, defensive, and negotiated measures to deal with the terrorists. On the ...
Gene mutations caused by a father's lifestyle can be inherited by multiple generations
2013-07-01
Bethesda, MD -- Gene mutations caused by a father's lifestyle can be inherited by his children, even if those mutations occurred before conception. What's more, these findings show that mutations in the germ-line are present in all cells of the children, including their own germ cells. This means that a father's lifestyle has the potential to affect the DNA of multiple generations and not just his immediate offspring. These findings were published in the July 2013 issue of The FASEB Journal.
"Our study should be regarded as a pilot study," said Roger Godschalk, Ph.D., ...
Fat grafting techniques for breast reconstruction are commonly used by US plastic surgeons
2013-07-01
Philadelphia, Pa. (July 1,2013) – Seventy percent of U.S. plastic surgeons have used fat grafting techniques for breast operations, but they are more likely to use it for breast reconstruction rather than cosmetic breast surgery, reports a survey study in the July issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).
Once discouraged, fat grafting to the breast is an increasingly common plastic surgery technique, according to the new report. But more data is needed to optimize the technique and ...
High rate of herbal supplement use by cosmetic plastic surgery patients
2013-07-01
Philadelphia, Pa. (July 1, 2013) – Preoperative evaluations before facial cosmetic surgery find that about half of patients are taking herbal and other supplements, reports a study in the July issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).
"It is extremely important to investigate the use of herbal medicines, as many of these supplements can put the surgical patient at risk," writes ASPS Member Surgeon Dr. Bahman Guyuron and colleagues of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland. They advise ...
Cloud behavior expands habitable zone of alien planets
2013-07-01
A new study that calculates the influence of cloud behavior on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of stars in the universe. This finding means that in the Milky Way galaxy alone, 60 billion planets may be orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone.
Researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University based their study, which appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters, on rigorous computer simulations of cloud behavior on alien planets. This cloud behavior dramatically expanded the habitable ...
Lack of immune cell receptor impairs clearance of amyloid beta protein from the brain
2013-07-01
Identification of a protein that appears to play an important role in the immune system's removal of amyloid beta (A-beta) protein from the brain could lead to a new treatment strategy for Alzheimer's disease. The report from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has been published online in Nature Communications.
"We identified a receptor protein that mediates clearance from the brain of soluble A-beta by cells of the innate immune system," says Joseph El Khoury, MD, of the Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases in the MGH Division of Infectious ...