Abstract
Research consistently reported that adolescents experienced high levels of exposure to community violence in the their life. There is a trend that adolescents in several cities in Indonesia exposed to violence in the community. The community violence among adolescents also affects their mental health problems. However, there are limited number of studies looking at the prevalence and association between exposure to community violence and mental health in developing countries such as Indonesia. The present study aimed to examine the association between exposure to community violence and psychological distress among adolescents with the prevalence of violence and distress as well. A quantitative study with a cross-sectional design by questionnaire method that include Kid Screening Adolescents Violence Exposure (KID-SAVE) instrument to measure the exposure to community violence and the Hopkins Symptom Check List (HSCL-25) instrument to measure the level of psychological distress. The result indicates more than 50% of respondents exposed at least four types of community violence in the previous year. Boys more exposed to community violence than girls. Further, 64.7% of respondents also experienced psychological distress, this number is higher than other epidemiology studies among adolescent populations. The girls found tend to exhibit psychological distress than boys. After control several socio-demographic characteristics, exposure to community violence was significantly associated with psychological distress. In conclusion, community violence and psychological distress showed as serious public health problems among adolescent population in Depok. Gender and school factors should be considered when designing mental health policy and prevention program. Strength and limitation of the study are discussed in relation to findings.