Mental Health of Children and Youths with Victimization Experiences: The Psychological Theory and Practice

Dear Colleagues,

Childhood victimization includes several types of violence in youths under 18 and can be committed by anyone. Some youths also experience multiple types of victimization. Globally, up to 1 billion children between 2 and 17 years of age have experienced neglect or emotional, physical, or sexual violence in the past year. Childhood victimization harms mental health across the lifespan, increasing the levels of anxiety, depression, anger, sadness, PTSD, and suicidal ideation. Some children who were victims show maladaptive behavior in adulthood, with higher drug use and criminal and violent behavior. However, other childhood experiences can buffer the impact of childhood victimization experiences. For example, effective parenting behaviors, healthy attachment bonds, and other community resources may influence a child's development and positively affect adulthood. For this reason, it is crucial to identify the existence of child victimization, assessing it reliably with instruments adapted for this purpose. Furthermore, it is also essential to identify the risk and protective factors of victimization experiences, making it possible to develop prevention programs with families, schools, and community and intervention programs that minimize the negative consequences of victimization.

This Special Issue aims to publish original empirical quantitative or qualitative research, original systematic reviews, and original meta-analysis review papers about the mental health of youths who have experienced victimization, following the suggested topics:

• Assessment of childhood and youth victimization experiences;
• Prevalence of childhood and youth victimization;
• Protective and risk factors of mental health on childhood and youth victimization;
• The impact of childhood and youth victimization on mental health;
• Prevention of childhood and youth victimization;
• Intervention with childhood and youth victimization.

In this Special Issue, contributions must be one of the following three categories of papers: articles, conceptual papers, or reviews; in addition, they must address the topic of the Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Telma C. Almeida
Dr. Jorge Cardoso
Dr. Sónia Maria Martins Caridade
Dr. Olga Cecília Soares Da Cunha

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• child and youth victimization
• mental health
• assessment
• protective factors
• risk factors
• impact
• prevention
• intervention