This document is a full summary of the course: 'Resilience to Violence' and compromises a summary of the required literature (multiple articles), lecture notes of all lectures and practice exam questions .
Resilience to Violence Course Summary
by Michelle Kowalski
Week 1
The Children of Kauai (Werner, 1992)
2 Trends:
- Impact of perinatal stress diminished with time
- Developmental outcome of virtually every biological risk condition was dependent on the quality of
the rearing (erziehend) environment
Perinatal trauma correlated with:
- Major physical handicaps of central nervous system & musculosketal & sensory systems
- Mental retardation, learning disabilities, chronic mental health problems (schizophrenia)
Significant social class differences and adult health status:
- poverty + perinatal stress = more likely to report serious health problems
- poverty + ‘below normal’ physical development at age 2 = more likely to have health problems (not
when from middle-class homes with similar ratings at age 2)
- poverty + handicap at age 10 = more likely to self-report health problems at age 32
Most participants who died with 30 years were men:
- from poor unstable homes
- suffered perinatal stress
- delivered by Cesarian section
- with mothers who suffered serious psychological trauma and physical abuse during pregnancy
- (Death rates of females with perinatal stress did not differ from peers without perinatal stress)
→ Environment more powerful determinant of outcome than perinatal trauma
→ Perinatal trauma related to impairment of physical & psychological development ONLY when
combined with chronic poverty
- 2/3 of high-risk children developed learning problems at age 10, had delinquency records, mental
health problems, teenage pregnancies in adolescence
→ ½ of these high-risk adolescents adapted well in adulthood (turning point: caring friend,
accepting and supportive spouse)
- 1/3 of high-risk children developed ‘normally’
Resilience in high-risk as adults:
- Personal competence, social support, reliance on faith and prayer
- stronger belief in own abilities and control of own fate
→ most high-risk youths with coping problems in adolescence showed improvement in adulthood
→ Turning points for youth who committed crime: military service, marriage, parenthood
5 clusters of protective factors for successful adaptation in adult life:
1 – Temperamental characteristics of individual helping to elicit positive response from others
2 – Skills and values leading to efficient use of whatever abilities one has (domestic responsibilities)
3 – Caregiving styles of parents fostering competence and self-esteem in child (mother’s education
level, structure in household)
4 – Supportive adults who fostered trust and act as gatekeepers for future (grandparents, mentors)
5 – Opening of opportunity at major life transition (high school to workplace, single to marriage,
Parenthood
,Most potent factors for resilience in high-risk:
- adult education provided by local colleges & educational and vocational skills acquired in armed
forces
→ personal growth in structured setting & chance to take responsibilities enhancing self-esteem
Higher parental education level linked to:
- positive parent-child interactions at age 1 and 2 and more emotional support (even when in poverty)
- infant’s health and physical status by age 2
- child’s competence at age 10
Scholastic competence at age 10 linked to:
- number of sources of help that the teenager attracted (support from peers, family members)
- sense of self-esteem at age 18 → less distress and emotionality in high-risk men at age 32
→ greater number of sources for emotional support in high-risk
Women in early adulthood
→ Most resilient high-risk youths left their adverse conditions and picked better ones
Interventions should focus on most at risk for developing coping problems (mostly males):
- preterm survivors of neonatal intensive care
- offspring of parents with severe psychopathology
- children reared by isolated single parents with no roots in community
- adolescents with conduct disorders who have poor reading skills
The prevalence of Child Maltreatment across the Globe: Review of a Series of Meta-Analyses
(Stoltenborgh et al., 2014)
• Child maltreatment research is dominated by research on sexual abuse (in time & number):
→ believed to have most severe consequences for development, more easily operationalised due to
clear-cut boundaries (as opposed to parental disciplinarian behaviours), less threatening to family
structures, more publicity
• The prevalence rates for informant studies were lower than for self-report studies.
→ most informant data only as annual reports of the agencies, informant studies more difficult to
carry out, informant recruiting more difficult, more expensive, government initiated
5 levels of Iceberg:
1 – children reported to police
2 – children reported to child protective agencies
3 – children reported to child protective agencies by professionals
4 – abused or neglected children recognised by relatives or neighbours (not brought to agencies yet)
5 – abused or neglected children recognised by nobody yet
→ Informant studies cover only level 1-3 (only 1 year period); Self-report studies cover all 5 levels
(Lifetime period)
→ Informant studies are underestimated
→ Self-reports on EA, EN & PN (when not taking chronicity into account) might be overestimated
• The prevalence of child maltreatment is largely similar across the globe.
Prevalence rates:
SA: 305 (7.6% among boys; 18% among girls)
PA: 157 (22.6%)
EA: 42 (36.3%)
EN: 17
PN: 15
EN & PN (16%)
→ Most self-reported, only 0.3% reported by informant
,Research of maltreatment:
- started with SA; Research on PA considerably late
- more available self-report studies for continent → report on more types of maltreatment
- concentrates on Western culture (North America & Europe: 5% of world population)
Lecture 1
• Reasons for Difference in abuse prevalence
→ Sexual abuse more definable than EA & EN
→ WEIRD countries mostly measured
• Knowledge of maltreated mostly based on Self-reports
→ easier to study
• Most prevalent form of abuse: Emotional abuse
• Why is there a discrepancy between self- & professional reports on abuse?
→ Professionals only see the ‘tip of the iceberg’
→ time of assessment
→ incidence might underestimate number of lifetime prevalence
• Social support most important in Resilience
Resilience: Positive adaptation in the context of risk or adversity
Guest lecture about Child maltreatment and Victimization (Scheuplein et al., 2021)
1. Victimization within & outside the family
42% of US mass shooters have history of childhood adversity (umbrella-term that includes child
maltreatment, abuse, neglect, bullying, poverty, parent with mental illness)
Child maltreatment: Abusive or neglectful experiences that occur to children and adolescents under
the age of 18
5 Types of child maltreatment:
1. Physical abuse
2. Emotional abuse
3. Sexual abuse
4. Physical neglect
5. Emotional neglect
→ Global lifetime prevalence of child maltreatment: 12-27%
Violence breeds violence: Increased risk to victimize others inside and outside family when having
experienced child maltreatment
Intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment hypotheses: Study direct relationship between
child maltreatment and victimization
across generations
includes 2 perspectives:
1. Victim-to-perpetrator perspective: Victims of child maltreatment are at increased risk of becoming
perpetrators of maltreatment once they become parents
2. Victim-to-victim perspective: Children of parents who have been maltreated during their childhood
are more likely to become victims of maltreatment themselves.
However, according to this perspective parents do not necessarily act
as the perpetrator. (Child of abused mother, more likely to be abused
by others)
→ These perspectives help to formulate clear hypotheses in research
,Prospective vs. Retrospective study design:
- Retrospective study design might cause overestimation of the actual effect
- More than half of the individuals with prospective observations of child maltreatment did not report
the maltreatment retrospectively
→ Methodological stronger studies presented only mixed support for the intergenerational
transmission of child maltreatment hypothesis → need for more robust & valid research
Methodological criteria:
- Recruitment of a representative sample
- Using valid, reliable, and similar measures
- Prospective vs. retrospective study design
Victim-to-perpetrator perspective confirmed by prospective 30-year cohort study with individuals
with history of child maltreatment (G2) and their children (G3):
- G2 twice as likely to have G3 offspring who are reported to Child protection services (CPS)
- G3 offspring of G2 were sig. more likely to have been sexually abused or neglected
- modest association of intergenerational maltreatment (d = .45)
- support for ignt of specific maltreatment types: emotional abuse (d = .57). physical abuse (d= .41),
sexual abuse (d = .39), neglect (d = .24)
- The risk of caregivers who have experienced child maltreatment to maltreat their own children is
estimated to be 2-3x higher than for non-maltreated caregivers (r = .29)
→ Children of parents who have been maltreated during childhood are more likely to become
victims of maltreatment themselves (victim-to-victim)
→ Victims of child maltreatment are at increased risk of becoming perpetrators of maltreatment
once they become parents (victim-to-perpetrator)
However: Most maltreated parents do not continue cycle of victimization & do not become
perpetrators!
Risk for offending behaviour is 1.8x higher for maltreated individuals
→ Maltreated individuals are more likely to engage in offending behaviour
The Rochester Youth Development Study (1986): investigating contextual features
Indicators of maltreatment:
1. Prevalence
2. Frequency
3. Duration
4. Type
5. Total severity
Key findings:
- Significant association between history of maltreatment before age 12 and delinquent behaviour
- This association increased as the severity of maltreatment increased
→ Support for violence breed violence hypothesis (sig. association after controlling for other
features)
• Experiencing maltreatment during childhood can have long-term impact on victimization
across generations (victim-to-victim & victim-to-perpetrator)
• Extreme levels of maltreatment can lead to higher rates of violent delinquency (violence
breeds violence)
• The child maltreatment-offending relation is not deterministic but rather depends on a
dynamic interplay of various variables
,2. Mechanisms connecting child maltreatment and victimization
HPA axis is a key stress response system in the human brain which is being activated when
homeostasis is threatened and produces cortisol (Glucocorticoids) to prepare for the fight or flight
response.
→ Sustained activation of HPA can lead to chronically elevated levels of Glucocorticoids in the brain
& thereby alter neurocognitive mechanisms
Normal allostatic response: ability to restore homeostasis within the body
Allostasis: brain shifts from higher order activation to lower order salience or threat activity
- Alert/safe/interested: thoughtful activity in the PFC – Top-down regulation of thought, action
- Stressed: reflexive, habitual activity in amygdala, basal ganglia – thereby activating autonomic
nervous system
Allostatic load: Chronic stress exposure (price the body pays to adapt to adverse situations)
can lead to different responses:
- Repeated hits: allostatic load repeats repeatedly due to high number of stressful situations
(depression, suicide, early mortality)
- Lack of adaptation: body fails to manage appropriate hormonal stress response (elongated response
to stress hormones)
- Prolonged response: inability to switch of allostatic response after stress has ended (prolonged
activation of blood pressure after stressor)
- Inadequate response: excessive activity of other systems (inadequate release of cortisol for example,
which then can trigger an inadequate release of inflammatory markers)
→ Adverse environments, thus chronic stress exposure can influence the stress response, which in
turn can lead to altered neurocognitive mechanisms
→ These changes are adaptive in the adverse environment, but not in a normative environment
→ Latent vulnerability because the individual is at increased risk to develop psychiatric
disorders
Example of Latent vulnerability: Heightened alertness can cause overattributing of hostile intentions,
which in turn can lead to hostile behaviour
Mechanisms of latent vulnerability:
1. Increased attention bias to Threat
Attentional bias to threat: Tendency to direct attention to stimuli that match their feelings and
thoughts
→ Children with history of maltreatment more rapidly detect and classify emotional faces as
Threatening
→ Physically abused children showed a response bias towards angry facial expressions in
comparison to neglected or not maltreated children
→ Hyperresponsivity of the amygdala (processing emotional faces, fear conditioning)
2. Reduced Reward processing & feedback learning
- Sources of reward (compliments) can be scarce and unpredictable in maltreating families
→ lowering/adjusting expectations can help to adapt to environment
→ Chronic stress exposure early in life can lead to long-term alterations in reward-related
behaviours, mediated by changes in the ventral striatum (reward processing, learning)
→ Reduced sensitivity towards rewards & blunted anticipation of rewarding cues on
behavioural and neural level
→ Inability to downregulate emotional arousal
, - Reward processing involved in feedback learning:
→ learning difficulties, putting them at greater risk of victimization & engaging in violent
delinquent behaviour later in life
3. Emotion (dys-)regulation: Ability to modulate one’s emotional arousal is important for responding
in a socially acceptable way to ongoing environmental demands
→ Altered emotion regulation increases risk for developing mental health problems
→ Child maltreatment poses threat to optimal emotion regulation development, putting child at
risk of mental health and aggressive behavioural problems
→ All three latent vulnerability factors place maltreated individuals at risk for maladaptive behaviour
→ Sustained HPA axis activation can lead to chronically elevated glucocorticoids in brain & altered
neurocognitive mechanisms
3. Breaking the cycle of victimization
- The ability to perform and fulfil normative social roles relies in part on threat reactivity, reward
processing and emotion regulation
→ vulnerability in these aspects can lead to maladaptive social functioning
→ maltreated individuals have greater difficulties forming or maintaining high-quality relationships
that help protect (buffer) against stress
Social buffering: Phenomenon in which social partner can attenuate acute physiological stress
response
→ reduction in release of glucocorticoids and proinflammatory markers into bloodstream
→ decreases allostatic load, helps to protect against the emergence of physical and mental health
problems
High quality relationships → development of emotion regulating skills (protective factor)
→ moderating the relationship between child maltreatment and mental health being
→ improving high quality social support → strengthening social buffering → reduction in
victimization
Economic burden of child maltreatment in the US: 2.000.000.000.000 $ (2 trillion $)
Intervention to modify the hostile interpretation bias: targeted feedback, interpreting situation from
another perspective → significant reduction in hostile attribution bias & self-reported aggression
Week 2
Psychological resilience: an update on definitions, a critical appraisal, and research
recommendations (Denckla, et al., 2020)
Key points:
- focus on conceptualizing resilience at multiple levels (biological to structural level)
- focus on dynamic nature of resilience (not individual trait)
- Research should focus on improving assessment of resilience (international and cross-cultural
validity), developing within-study designs that have more intense phenotyping strategies, examining
outcomes at multiple levels and domains, integrating conceptualizations from individual to
population health level
- brain of resilient individuals: reduced interconnectivity between modules (problematic brain
structures exert less influence on brain network, which can still compensate for problematic areas)
- Social support crucial for resilience
- Physical health important topic within resilience research
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