The Contributions of Political Life Events to Psychological Distress Among South African

Abstract

The psychological consequences of adverse political experiences among South African youth were studied in a sample of 540 black and white adolescents from two age groups, evenly divided by gender. Three questionnaires were administered, measuring exposure to political life events, the presence of symptoms of psychopathology, and stressful personal life events during the previous 5 years. The first hypothesis, predicting a substantial contribution of stressful political experiences to psychopathology, was strongly supported; when stressful personal life events were partialed out, a significant effect for political life events remained both on general distress and symptomatology indices. The second hypothesis of a linear relation between exposure to political life events and severity of distress was also confirmed. The findings underscore the enduring impact on children's mental health of past apartheid policies in South Africa specifically, and adverse political environments in general.

Psychiatric Effects of Protracted Conflict and Political Life Events Exposure among Adolescents in Israel: 1998–2011

“…The PLE scale has been widely used and validity studies assessing cross‐nationality transferability for Jewish and Arab Israeli youth, for Palestinian youth (Slone et al., ) and for Black and White South African adolescents (Slone, Kaminer, & Durrheim, ) showed good discriminant validity of the scale. There is empirical support for the distinctiveness of the PLE from general life events scales (Slone & Roziner, ).…”

The Association Between Right-Wing Political Ideology and Youth Distress

“…The first is the wave of terror that has raged through Israel since September 2000, and the second is the evacuation of settlements in Gush Katif and Northern Samaria during August-September 2005. Political events such as terror and war (Ronen et al 2003;Garbarino et al 1991;Garbarino and Kostelny 1996), the assassination of political leaders (Klingman 2001;Raviv et al 1998), internal displacement and resettlement (Erol et al 2005;Shacham and Lahad 2004), and a range of other violent politically related events (Slone et al 2000;Slone et al 1998) were all found to have a negative effect on the well being of adolescents. The negative reactions that were found included symptoms of anxiety and depression, feelings of pain and anger, vulnerability, helplessness, somatic complaints and behavioral problems.…”

Can appraisals of common political life events impact subjective well‐being?

“…Several studies documented that the perceived impact of political events was related to increased levels of psychological distress (Slone & Hallis, ; Slone et al., ). The PLE scale and analogous measurement strategies evidenced similar results during different periods of hostilities in the Middle East and in other conflictual geopolitical contexts (e.g., Lavi & Slone, ; Muldoon & Wilson, ; Punamäki, ; Slone, Kaminer, & Durrheim, ).…”