Early
violence exposure doesn't raise future risk
By Charnicia Huggins
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news
Reuters
- 24th May 2006
NEW YORK
(Reuters Health) - Children who witness domestic or other interpersonal
violence are no more likely to become adult victims of violence
than those who do not witness abuse, results of a new study suggest.
Abuse is
common and many children witness abuse, co-author Dr. Amy A. Ernst,
a professor of emergency medicine at the University of New Mexico
in Albuquerque, told Reuters Health. "Still, it's not necessarily
a correlation," she said.
The findings
of the study were presented last week at the annual meeting of the
Society for Academic Emergency Medicine in San Francisco.
Previous
reports have suggested that those who perpetrate interpersonal violence
are more likely to have witnessed domestic violence during their
childhood. To further investigate, Ernst and colleague evaluated
280 men and women who visited a local emergency department. Half
of the subjects were male, 46 percent were Hispanic and 36 percent
were white.
Using a
touch-screen computer, which allowed the subjects to remain anonymous,
the participants were asked if they had witnessed interpersonal
violence as a child and if their children are now exposed to such
violence.
Twenty-six
percent of all study participants reported witnessing interpersonal
violence as a child, and, similar to previous research, these individuals
were also more likely to have also experienced child abuse.
However,
these subjects were no more likely to become adult victims of abuse
than those who had not witnessed violence during their childhood,
the study findings indicate.
"Maybe
when children witness interpersonal violence they learn not to become
victims," Ernst said. Boys who witness such violence may instead
"wind up becoming perpetrators" of abuse in later years,
while girls who witness abuse may "avoid having it happen to
them" as adults, Ernst speculates.
In general,
23.5 percent of all study participants were victims of ongoing interpersonal
violence, including 32 percent of those who had witnessed interpersonal
violence as a child and 21 percent who had not witnessed such violence.
In other
findings, those who witnessed early domestic violence were more
likely to be abused as a child, earn less than $20,000 per year
and to be younger than other study participants. Contrary to prior
reports, they were no more likely to drink or do drugs - or to marry
a substance abuser -- than those who did not witness violence in
childhood.
Reuters
Health
