Substance use and multiple victimisation among adolescents in South Africa

doi:10.1016/j.addbeh.2005.09.009

Addictive Behaviors

Volume 31, Issue 7, July 2006, Pages 1163-1176

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2005.09.009 Get rights and content

Abstract

The aims of the study were to examine the relationship between multiple victimisation and drug use, and the role of drug use and other intra-personal, peer, parental and environmental factors in predicting multiple victimisation among adolescents in South Africa. A cross-sectional design was employed. The participants comprised 1474 male and female adolescents aged between 12 and 17 years, from Durban and Cape Town. They completed questionnaire measures assessing demographic characteristics; self, peer and parental drug use; self and peer delinquency; parental child-centredness and rules; and community drug availability and exposure to violence on television. A measure of multiple victimisation assessed whether or not the respondents had experienced two or more different types of violence in their lifetime. There was a significant association between frequency of tobacco, alcohol and marijuana use and multiple victimisation. Significant predictors of multiple victimisation in multiple logistic regression analyses were variables within intra-personal, peer, parental and environmental domains. Victimisation prevention programmes in South Africa should be comprehensive and target adolescents' drug use as well as their other psychosocial risk factors.

Section snippets

Background

Since South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994 there has been a decline in political violence among young people, but assaultative violence involving weapons, sexual assault, domestic violence and gang-related violence remain a problem. Violence is a major public health concern (Krug, Mercy, Dahlberg, & Zwi, 2002). It not only causes injury and death but also affects cognitive, behavioural, social and emotional functioning among adolescents in South Africa (Ensink et al., 1997,

Participants

The sample consisted of 1474 adolescents, 633 of whom were sampled in Durban (43%) and 841 (57%) of whom were from Cape Town. They were interviewed in 2001 and 2002. The sample included 804 (54.5%) girls and 670 (45.5%) boys, and their mean age was 14.68 years (S.D. = 1.65). In total, 644 self-identified as “African” (44%), 317 as “coloured”(22%), 299 as “white” (20%), and 211 as “Indian” (14%), which refers to being of African, mixed, European and Asian descent, respectively. These labels

Results

The findings indicate that 845 (57.3%), 340 (23.1%), 164 (11.1%), 79 (5.4%), 31 (2.1%) and 15 (1.0%) of the respondents reported having experienced none, one, two, three, four and five of the five different types of violent acts, respectively. In other words, about one fifth (19.6%) of the total sample reported having been multiply victimised, where multiple victimisation refers to having experienced two or more types of acts of violence in the adolescent's lifetime (Outlaw et al., 2002). The

Discussion

To our knowledge, this is the only study to have explored the importance of various types of drug use and psychosocial variables within the domains of intra-personal, peer, family and environmental factors in predicting multiple victimisation among adolescents in South Africa. The number of different types of victimisation reported by respondents in this study and the rate of multiple victimisation of 20% was almost identical to that reported for adolescents in a national survey of 4023

Acknowledgements

A version of this paper was presented during a plenary session at the 31st Annual Conference of the Global Health Council in Washington, DC, USA. The research was supported by a Research Scientist Award DA 00244 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, and a Fogarty International Collaboration Award 1 R03 TWO1344, both to Dr. Judith S. Brook, as well as by funding from the Medical Research Council to Dr. Neo K. Morojele. We are grateful to Mavis K. Moshia

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Substance use and multiple victimisation among adolescents in South Africa

Abstract

Section snippets

Background

Participants

Results

Discussion

Acknowledgements

Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Child Abuse and Neglect

The Lancet

The Social Science Journal

Journal of Adolescence

Journal of Criminal Justice

Discerning community resilience in disadvantaged communities in the context of violence and injury prevention

South African Journal of Psychology

Social risks and child development in South Africa: A nation's program to protect the human rights of children

American Journal of Orthopsychiatry

Early risk factors for violence in Colombian adolescents

American Journal of Psychiatry

The psychosocial etiology of adolescent drug use: A family interactional approach

Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs

Crime, violence and public health

Mexican-American and White American school drop-outs: Drug use, health status and involvement in violence

Public Health Reports

Social change and crime rate trends: A routine activity approach

American Sociological Review

Community violence and PTSD in selected South African townships

Journal of Interpersonal Violence

An assessment of the validity of adolescent self-reported smoking using three biological indicators

Nicotine and Tobacco Research

Post-traumatic stress disorder in children exposed to violence

South African Medical Journal

Family context and criminal victimization in adolescence

Youth and Society

Undetected delinquent behavior

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency

A general theory of crime

The psychological effects of chronic violence on children living in South African townships

South African Journal of Psychology

Victims of personal crime: An empirical foundation for the theory of personal victimization

Longitudinal relations between children's exposure to TV violence and their aggressive and violent behavior in young adulthood

Developmental Psychology