Young and injured
CITY OFFICIALS KNOW how to respond to rodent infestations, overflowing dumpsters, and illegal disposal of hazardous waste. Now the challenge is to clean up the socially toxic environments that become breeding grounds for violence and chaos.
A recent Harvard School of Public Health survey of 1,079 Boston students in grades 9-12 shows just how noxious the city can be for its young people. Over 80 percent of the students said they witnessed someone being hit, kicked, or beaten in the last year. More than a quarter said they had sustained such an assault themselves. Most shocking, perhaps, was the 30 percent who responded ''yes" when asked whether a family member had died as a result of violence.
The survey, commissioned by the city, does not tell the entire story. Neither private school students nor public exam school attendees were included. But it does reflect life for thousands of young people in Boston who live in the city's poorer neighborhoods and attend district high schools. It's the kind of study that can't be shelved. No city can promote itself as world-class when half of its young people are candidates for post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Harvard survey team sees the study as a baseline for larger investigations, according to researcher Deborah Azrael. Middle school students may also be included in an upcoming study. Future surveys would benefit from recommendations on how best to mitigate the impact of such exposures to violence. A reader of the current study comes away with an appreciation for the depth of the problem but little understanding of how to prevent it.
Some findings suggest policy choices. Students in the ninth and 10th grades, for example, were twice as likely as older students to show signs of aggression. In a time of tight resources, that finding argues for concentrating violence prevention efforts in the first two years of high school.
Forty-one percent of the students said they feel unsafe while riding on the MBTA. That finding should prompt transit officials to rethink their decision to disband an aggressive anticrime unit that focused on youth violence.
About 40 percent of the students showed significant signs of depression. Those who scored high on the depression scale were also most likely to top the charts for truancy, poor grades, and victimization. The likelihood that depression is going undiagnosed and untreated among young people in Boston seems high. That argues for mental health screenings in the schools where researchers found significant numbers of depressed youths.
One promising sign is the willingness of the surveyed teens to talk with responsible adults. They may be traumatized, but they are far from hopeless.
