Poly-victimization, mental health problems, and resilience among adolescents in residential care in Catalonia
- Autores: Anna Segura Montagut
- Directores de la Tesis: Noemí Pereda Beltrán (dir. tes.), Georgina Guilera Ferré (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat de Barcelona ( España ) en 2016
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Jorge Fernández del Valle (presid.), Manuel P. Eisner (secret.), Doris Kristina Nilsson (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Psicología Clínica y de la Salud
- Materias:
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- Resumen
The aim of this doctoral thesis is to analyze the prevalence of lifetime and past-year interpersonal violence or victimization, and multiple experiences of violence or poly-victimization experienced by adolescents in residential care organized by the child welfare system in Catalonia, the northeastern region of Spain. Furthermore, the research aims to examine the association between poly-victimization and symptom severity, and to analyze the role of resilience variables in the relationship between victimization and mental health problems.
The sample consisted of 129 youths between 12 and 17 years old (M = 14.58, SD = 1.62) (64 males and 65 females) recruited from 18 different residential facilities, most of them long-term centers (78.5%), run by the Directorate-General for Children and Adolescents (DGAIA) within the Ministry of Social Welfare and Family of Catalonia. The Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ; Finkelhor, Hamby, Ormrod, & Turner, 2005), the Youth Self Report (YSR; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001) and the Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire (ARQ; Gartland, Bond, Olsson, Buzwell, & Sawyer 2006) were used to assess victimization experiences, mental health problems and resilience variables respectively.
All adolescents in residential care had experienced one type of victimization during their lives, and most of them (85.3%) during the past year. Close to three quarters of adolescents in residential care experienced lifetime witnessing and indirect victimization (90.7%), conventional crime (88.4%), caregiver victimization (76.7%), and peer and sibling victimization (73.6%), and more than a quarter of the sample experienced electronic (33.3%) and sexual (29.5%) victimization. Overall, older adolescents were more likely to report more lifetime experiences of victimization than their younger peers, and females were more likely to report witnessing of family violence, caregiver and sexual victimization than males. Following the top 10% criterion for defining lifetime poly-victimization, poly-victims were those adolescents who had experienced 15 or victimizations over their lifetimes. Considering the poly-victimization criteria for the past year (Finkelhor, Ormrod, Turner, & Hamby, 2005a) 45.2% of adolescents experienced at least four forms of victimization. Poly-victimization was a significant predictor of clinically severe thought problems, rule-breaking behavior, and anxiety/depression symptoms. Sexual and electronic victimization modules were shown as significant predictors of withdrawn/depressed and aggressive behavior, and attention problems respectively. Furthermore, poly-victimization was associated with fewer individual and environmental resources. Self-resources and community support mediated the relationship between victimization and both internalizing and externalizing symptoms, whereas self-resources, school and peer support moderated the relationship between victimization and externalizing symptoms. Overall, adolescents with fewer self-resources and less school support reported more externalizing symptoms, whereas those with more peer support showed higher externalizing problems. Also, with regard to moderation, although high levels of the variables mentioned protected victims from developing clinical symptoms, this was not the case for poly-victims, who experienced mental health problems regardless of their resources.
Victimization and poly-victimization are common life situations for adolescents in residential care. The child welfare system should produce protocols in order to continuously assess these violent events and prevent the experience of poly-victimization which is associated with serious psychological problems. The studies also highlighted the importance of empowering individual and environmental resources of those victimized adolescents before they experience poly-victimization, since it seems that this is when resources are exhausted.
