Department of County ​Human Services

The present study investigates how adolescent exposure to violence (AEV), in the form of parental physical abuse, witnessing parental violence, and exposure to violence in the neighborhood, is related to adult anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, controlling for more general adolescent violent victimization and for self-reports and parent reports of mental health problems in adolescence, on a national household-based probability sample of individuals who were adolescents in the mid-1970s and who were followed through early adulthood in the early 2000s. The results suggest that AEV is associated with mental health problems in adolescence but not, controlling for other variables, in adulthood, but there is continuity in mental health problems associated with AEV from adolescence to adulthood.

Nearly two hours after the September 11 terrorist attacks, a hate crime was committed against the Islamic Cultural Center in Eugene, Oregon. Rather than following the conventional criminal justice process, the director of the center and his wife chose to engage in a process of restorative dialogue with other community members and the offender himself. This case study of moving from hatred to healing occurred in the larger context of restorative justice, a movement that is now developing in many hundreds of communities in more than 17 countries. Social workers committed to community practice have played an active role in this reform movement, which has developed over the past two decades.