This study examines the effects of experiencing and witnessing domestic violence has on adolescents' self awareness as well as emotional issues of depression and anxiety. The results of the study is intended to be used as fundamental data for seeking ...
This study examines the effects of experiencing and witnessing domestic violence has on adolescents' self awareness as well as emotional issues of depression and anxiety. The results of the study is intended to be used as fundamental data for seeking intervention regarding adolescents' psychological and social ineptitude and proposing effective approaches for social welfare services.
In order to achieve the objectives, 250 students attending middle and high schools in Masan and Changwon were significantly sampled as survey subjects, and a questionnaire was conducted on April 2005. Among the surveyed, 236 were used as the analytical data.
Conflict management behavioral scales of CTS and CTS2 were used to assess the degrees of witnessing violence between parents and experiencing parent-child violence. Other tools used were BDI for measuring depression, specific anxiety test(STAI-Ⅱ) for anxiety and SPPA(Self-Proception Profile for Adolescents) for self-awareness.
Main findings of the study are as follows.
First, it was found that 70.6% of the surveyed adolescents had either witnesses or experienced the father exercising violence of some kind toward the mother. In particular, 71.1% of the surveyed adolescents had witnessed the father being verbally abusive toward the mother, and 70.1% had experienced direct verbal abuse, indicating that verbal abuse was the most serious problem among domestic violence. It was also revealed that 13.1% of the surveyed teenagers said that they had either witnessed or experienced physical violence.
Second, examination of the correlation among factors related to adolescents' experience with domestic violence revealed that indirect experience of violence has significant positive correlations with direct experience of violence, depression and anxiety, whereas it has significant negative correlations with self-awareness, gender and sibling order. Furthermore, experience of indirect violence turned out to have significant positive correlations with depression, anxiety, self-awareness, age and religion whereas it has significant negative correlations with gender and sibling order.
Third, as results of conducting path analyses to assess the elements that are affected by direct and indirect domestic violence, it turned out that indirect violence does not have effects on self-awareness. However, it was revealed that direct violence has negative correlation with self-awareness, indicating that adolescents with direct violence experience has low self-awareness.
Fourth, it was examined that direct and indirect experience of violence has a positive correlation with depression. This signifies that adolescents that have experienced direct and indirect violence has higher degrees of depression. Self-awareness has a negative correlation with depression, meaning that the lower the degree of self-awareness, the higher the degree of depression.
Furthermore, as results of surveys regarding the influence of direct violence experienced by adolescents on their deviant behavior, it turned out to have significant correlations with all of the variables chosen: exercising violence on others, suicidal tendency, experience of smoking and experience of running away from home. Direct violence especially displayed a high degree of correlation with the experience of running away from home.
The study results bears significance in implementing social welfare in following regards.
First, there must be measures taken to provide and link school and local social welfare programs to prevent and remedy problems occurring due to domestic violence.
Second, it is necessary to provide specialized social welfare services by categorizing the groups according to the degree of domestic violence experienced and gender. Moreover, there must be constant development and provision of emotional support and treatment programs for adolescents with domestic violence experiences.
Third, training must be provided for social welfare institutions and police who are responsible for providing services and initial intervention regarding domestic violence.
Fourth, in order to recover the family relationship, there must be programs designed to restore trust and improve communication between the parents and children. Such programs will alleviate adolescent problems caused by domestic violence, help the adolescents cope with the society and help restore the relationship among the family members.