Political Violence, Armed Conflict, and Youth Adjustment: A Developmental Psychopathology Perspective on Research and Intervention

This book reviews and critiques the growing literature on youth development under conditions of political violence and armed conflict. It presents a robust framework, based in developmental psychopathology, for evaluating current research on this topic for strength of design, methodology, and documentation. Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies from diverse regions and conflicts as well as across disciplines examine risks and challenges as well as resilience and coping as youth develop in unstable and threatening environments. In addition, this book provides strategies for designing and implementing prevention and intervention programs as well as further opportunities for expanding applied research for youth exposed to political violence and armed conflict.
Topics featured in this book include:

• Analysis of major research on youths' normative and pathological development during political violence and war.
  
• Guidelines for assessing research studies on the impact of political violence and armed conflict on youth.
  
• The effects of social ecology factors (e.g., family, school, and community) on youth functioning.
  
• Post-traumatic stress disorder.
  
• Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.

Political Violence, Armed Conflict, and Youth Adjustment is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, clinicians/professionals, and graduate students in the fields of child and school psychology, family studies, and public health as well as developmental psychology, child and adolescent psychiatry, political science, anthropology, social and peace psychology, sociology, and ethnic studies.

E. Mark Cummings, Ph.D., is Professor and Notre Dame Endowed Chair in Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. Guided by the Emotional Security Theory, his work focuses on processes associated with adaptive and maladaptive family functioning and children's and adolescents' development. Dr. Cummings is also interested in relations between family and community contexts and youth development, including pathways to adjustment and well-being in international samples of families exposed to community violence, and relations between political violence, armed conflict, and child development. His current research is also concerned with family- and community-based interventions for families and children.
Christine E. Merrilees, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at the State University of New York at Geneseo. Her research uses developmental and social psychological theory with advanced longitudinal methods to assess the impacts of conflict and intergroup divide on youth development. Her work has been published in high impact journals in developmental, clinical, and social psychology, and her current research focuses on ethnic identity and contact processes that impact well-being and intergroup attitudes and behavior.
Laura K. Taylor, Ph.D., is a Lecturer in the School of Psychology with the Centre of Identity and Intergroup Relations at Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. She has published more than two dozen peer-reviewed articles on her research, which uses a developmental intergroup framework to study risk and resilience processes related to the impact of political violence on children, families, and communities. Her more recent work has focused on constructive outcomes and positive youth development.
Christina F. Mondi, M.A., is a graduate research fellow of the National Science Foundation and a doctoral student in Developmental Psychopathology and Clinical Science at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests are in socio-emotional processes underlying normal development and the development of psychopathology, and in school- and family-based early childhood interventions.