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Trauma and Violence in Children and Adolescents: A Developmental Perspective

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International Handbook of Violence Research

Abstract

Interpersonal violence is a universal element of all human societies —violence is respon-sible for more years of life lost than any other single cause of death in the world. Even if it does not result in death, violence causes profound, and often lasting harm to its victims. In the United States, at least 15 percent of the population report having been molested, physi-cally attacked or raped. In the United States, men are physically assaulted more than women (11,1 percent vs. 10,3 percent), while women report higher rates of sexual assault (7,3 percent vs. 1,3 percent) (van der Kolk, 2000a). Some societies are much more violent than others. Numerous factors, discussed elsewhere in this volume, are thought to contribute to the disparities in interpersonal violence between societies; these include poverty, sharp differentiation in sex roles, a large spread in income between the highest and lowest levels of society, tolerance of violence as a way of resolving differences, and strongly held ideo-logical convictions that broach no deviation.

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  1. Bessel A. van der Kolk
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  2. Annette Streeck-Fischer
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Wilhelm Heitmeyer John Hagan

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van der Kolk, B.A., Streeck-Fischer, A. (2003). Trauma and Violence in Children and Adolescents: A Developmental Perspective. In: Heitmeyer, W., Hagan, J. (eds) International Handbook of Violence Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-306-48039-3_41

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