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. 2020 Oct;74(10):845-850.
doi: 10.1136/jech-2020-214188. Epub 2020 Jul 1.

Trauma and violent offending among adolescents: a birth cohort study

Kirsi Peltonen  1 , Noora Ellonen  2 , Joonas Pitkänen  3 , Mikko Aaltonen  4 , Pekka Martikainen  3
Affiliations

Trauma and violent offending among adolescents: a birth cohort study

Kirsi Peltonen et al. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2020 Oct.

Abstract

Background: Earlier studies, based on data collected among juvenile court clients or prisoners, suggest that there is an association between trauma and adolescent-onset offending. However, there is a lack of large-scale data on juvenile violence and clinical mental health observations with unselected participants, and a risk-factor-oriented research combining multiple variables affecting violent behaviour.

Methods: We analyse the effect of trauma on violent offending using longitudinal register-linkage population data. The study is based on administrative data on all Finnish children born between 1986 and 2000, linked with their biological and adoptive parents (N=913 675). The data include annually updated demographic and socioeconomic information from Statistics Finland, hospital discharge and specialised outpatient service records as well as the data from all suspected criminal offences known to the police (1996-2017). We measured trauma diagnosis at age 12-14 and followed participants for subsequent violent criminality from age 15 to 17.

Results: The population average estimates, taking into account observed substance abuse and other mental health diagnoses, shows that trauma-related disorders (adjustment problems, post-traumatic stress disorder and acute stress disorder) were associated with violent offending. The same was true in sibling fixed effect models, which take into account genetic and environmental confounding shared by siblings.

Discussion: These results suggest that severe stress related to traumatic or strong negative life changes in adolescence is a risk factor for violent behaviour.

Keywords: Child health; Gene environment interactions; Psychiatry; Psychosocial factors.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The risk differences and 95% confidence intervals of violent criminality by trauma diagnosis across all population models.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The risk differences and 95% CIs of violent criminality by trauma diagnosis across all sibling fixed effect models.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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