Raising Safe Villages: Cultural-Ecological Factors That Influence the Emotional Adjustment of Adolescents

The fear of real and imaginary calamity is a detrimental strain on the emotional adjustment of America's urban youth. This study investigated the relationship of African American adolescent perceptions of calamity fears, kinship social support, and neighborhood social capital to various aspects of depression. Findings indicate that adolescents from urban neighborhoods, where they felt safe and were fearful of potential calamity, showed lower levels of global depressive symptoms. Some interesting gender differences were noted, with adolescent girls from high-risk neighborhoods benefiting the mostfrom high levels of neighborhood social capital and high levels of calamity fear Implications for integrating ecological factors into violence prevention and mental health promotion programs are discussed.