Community violence exposure and substance use: cross‑cultural and gender perspectives

Abstract

The negative effects of community violence exposure on child and adolescent mental health are well documented and exposure to community violence has been linked both to a number of internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Our aim was, therefore, to investigate cross-cultural and gender differences in the relationship between community violence exposure and substance abuse. A self-report survey was conducted among 10,575, 12–18 year old adolescents in three different countries, Czech Republic (<i>N</i> = 4537), Russia (<i>N</i> = 2377) and US (<i>N</i> = 3661). We found that in all three countries both substance use and problem behavior associated with it increased similarly along with severity of violence exposure and this association was not gender-specific. It was concluded that in spite of the differences in the levels of violence exposure and substance use cross-culturally and by gender, the pattern of their association is neither culturally nor gender bound.