The Effects of Child Abuse and Exposure to Domestic Violence on Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior Problems

摘要

This study examines the effects of child abuse anddomestic violence exposure in childhood on adolescentinternalizing and externalizing behaviors. Data for thisanalysis are from the Lehigh Longitudinal Study, a prospec-tive study of 457 youth addressing outcomes of familyviolence and resilience in individuals and families. Resultsshow that child abuse, domestic violence, and both incombination (i.e., dual exposure) increase a child's risk forinternalizing and externalizing outcomes in adolescence.When accounting for risk factors associated with additionalstressors in the family and surrounding environment, onlythose children with dual exposure had an elevated risk of thetested outcomes compared to non-exposed youth. However,while there were some observable differences in theprediction of outcomes for children with dual exposurecompared to those with single exposure (i.e., abuse only orexposure to domestic violence only), these difference werenot statistically significant. Analyses showed that the effectsof exposure for boys and girls are statistically comparable.