Urban adolescents are exposed to a substantial amount of community violence which has the potential to influence psychological functioning. To examine the relationship between community violence exposure and mental health symptoms in urban adolescents, a literature review using MEDLINE, CINAHL, PubMed, PsycINFO, CSA Social Services, and CSA Sociological Abstracts was conducted. Search terms included adolescent/adolescence, violence, urban, mental health, well-being, emotional distress, depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, and aggression. Twenty six empirical research articles from 1997-2007 met inclusion criteria for review. Findings indicate an influence of community violence exposure on mental health symptoms, particularly posttraumatic stress and aggression. Mediators and moderators for community violence exposure and mental health symptoms help explain relationships. Limitations in the literature are the lack of consistency in measurement and analysis of community violence exposure, including assessment of proximity and time frame of exposure, and in analysis of victimization and witnessing of community violence. Knowledge about identification of urban adolescents exposed to chronic community violence and who experience mental health symptoms is critical to mental health nursing practice and research. KeywordsAdolescent; Community Violence; Mental Health; Urban Urban adolescents report very high rates of community violence exposure (CVE); more than 85% witness some form of violence in their lifetime (Farrell & Bruce, 1997;Overstreet & Braun, 2000;Mazza & Reynolds, 1999;Pastore, Fisher, & Friedman, 1996) and as many as 69% report direct victimization (Duckworth, Hale, Clair, & Adams, 2000;Howard, Feigelman, Li, Cross, & Rachuba, 2002;Overstreet & Braun, 2000). These rates make it important to examine the effects of CVE on the psychological well-being of urban adolescents. For this paper, CVE is considered to be "deliberate acts intended to cause harm against a person or persons in the community" (Cooley, Turner, & Beidel, 1995, p. 202). CVE encompasses direct victimization and witnessing violence against others.Depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and aggression have negative associations with CVE in urban adolescents (Cooley-Quille, Boyd, Frantz, & Walsh, 2001;Foster, Kuperminc & Price, 2004;Gorman-Smith & Tolan, 1998 1999). These relationships between CVE and mental health, however, are not always consistent, and the impact of CVE on urban adolescents' psychological functioning is not clearly established (Farrell & Bruce, 1997;White, Bruce, Farrell, & Kliewer, 1998). Some investigators discuss desensitization, where adolescents adapt by having lower than expected mental health symptoms in response to CVE (McCart et al., 2007;Ng-Mak, Salzinger, Feldman, & Stueve, 2004). These discrepancies call for a better understanding of the correlates between CVE and mental health.The purpose of this article is to examine the research on the relationships between CVE and ment...
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