Effects of Community Violence on Urban Families

Purpose: The purpose of this review is to answer the question: What are the effects of community violence on urban families? Methods: Sage Journal, Ebscohost, JSTOR, ProQuest, Wiley, and CSUN OneSearch. 1990 to present were searched. Criteria for inclusion: discussed and identified prevalence and effects of community violence on urban communities. Criteria for Exclusion: Studies on community violence in suburban populations and violence in rural communities were excluded. Studies of alcohol or substance abuse in urban communities without community or family violence as well as duplicate studies were excluded. Results: Community violence in the form of neighborhood, school and parental violence impacts urban families in the form of intergenerational trauma, mental health and adverse behavioral outcomes were used to formulate the results. Discussion: The research collected suggests that exposure to maltreatment and community violence may increase mental health symptoms. However, while maltreatment may increase symptoms across a broad range of mental health domains, the impact of community violence is more constrained, suggesting that these environmental risk factors exponentially impact mental health functioning.