Polivitimização e revitimização em adolescentes: avaliação e consequências para a saúde mental.

Abstract

The word victimization has been used in literature as a reference to suffering violence. In this project, the experience and suffering of violence by adolescents from Goiânia were studied. The sample of this study were students from the public state school, chosen because they corresponded to the desired age group. The violence against adolescents has been a great factor of social concerns. Brazilian statistics show that the numbers have increased in the last years. The concern about this specific population occurs due to the vulnerability to which they are socially exposed. At this group age, violence occurs not only in the domestic environment, but also in the streets and among peers. On the other hand, they are not under their tutors supervision, which, most of the times, makes them easy targets for victimization. Brazilian literature highlights many empirical studies demonstrating teenagers victimization accompanied by new violent expositions, reinforcing the violence cycle of this group. However, the concern is extended to the consequences of violence on teenagers mental health. It is a fact that not all of them will become ill because of victimization or because of the violent context, but the study results show that the damages can be immediate and also long term, with consequences to their adult life. Facing this context, the studies in this thesis become very relevant, as it aims to demonstrate that the experience of violence leads to new victimizations and these cause damage to the mental health of adolescents in short and long terms. In the first article a systematical revision of the studies about victimization, revictimization, polyvictimization and mental health in Brazilian adolescents is presented. In the second one, the descriptive statistics about victimization, revictimization and polyvictimization, are presented in the Last year and Throughout Life, as well as the description of the most frequents kinds . The third essay presents the correlation between the different perspectives of victimization and the correlations between the victimization in the Last year and Throughout Life. The fourth and last essay evaluates the presence of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in three adolescent groups: non-victimized, once victimized and revictimized. The results of all of these empirical studies confirm the thesis that violence leads to violence, due to the experience of victimization which made the adolescents vulnerable to new victimizations and the victimized and revictimized groups showed significant differences between internalized and externalized symptoms means.