Although there is a general consensus among concerned
professionals that exposure to community violence is likely to be
stressful and may contribute significantly to immediate and long-term
mental health problems, there is virtually no empirical research on
either its acute or enduring effects. In the absence of data,
investigators planning research in this area must look to other
studies of the impact of chronic environmental trauma on children,
including the effects of war and child maltreatment. Research on child
abuse provides an important source of information on the effects of
trauma on children because it draws on both prospective and
retrospective studies crossing a variety of theoretical perspectives
and disciplines. The existence of data on both the acute impact of
abuse on children and its chronic effects and outcomes in adults
informs the generation of developmentally based psychological and
biological hypotheses. This paper utilizes data from research on the
acute and chronic effects of sexual abuse to discuss three broad
hypotheses that may be relevant to the study of the effects of
community violence on children.