The impact of political life events on children's psychological adjustment

Abstract

The life events model was extended to study quantitatively the effects of conflictual political conditions on children's adjustment. Subjects were 397 Israeli children aged 12–13 from three residential areas, each representing different political tensions—central Tel Aviv area, Golan Heights and the occupied West Bank settlements. The Political Life Events (PLE) scale constructed for the study revealed a significant array of measurable adverse political events to which children attribute trauma response, with both severity and impact higher for children from the settlements. The hypotheses of a linear relation between severity and impact of PLE exposure to psychological distress were confirmed for all three areas and for both genders. Implications of these findings relate to the efficacy of the life events model in the political domain and to the data yield on children's subjective distress and psychiatric symptomatology reactions during an assumably normalized period. Methodological, political and clinical ramifications of these results are discussed.