When a child threatens to hurt someone, take it seriously. Children and adolescents who threaten violence are significantly more likely to behave violently than those who do not make threats, according to a study of more than 9,000 youngsters reported in the August issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine , a journal of the American Medical Association.
"The strong relationship between threats of violence and self-reported interpersonal violence has important implications for violence prevention," the researchers from Case Western Reserve University and Kent State University conclude. Parents, peers, teachers and others involved with children should take such threats seriously, and "policies and procedures should be developed to ensure that children who threaten others receive proper management," the report cautions.
Students who frequently threaten others are at particularly high risk for violence, according to the researchers. Compared with students who did not threaten others, those who made frequent threats were 17 times more likely to report having shot at someone and 19 times more likely to have attacked someone with a knife, according to principal investigator Mark Singer of CWRU's Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences and co-author Daniel Flannery of KSU's Institute for the Study and Prevention of Violence.
Their research is based upon pooled data from three large independent studies, which surveyed a total of 9,487 students in grades 3 through 12 at 33 schools in Ohio, Colorado, and Arizona. The students ranged in age from 7 to 19.
The students completed an in-school questionnaire that asked how often they had threatened to hurt someone and how often they had committed specific kinds of violence.
For elementary and middle school children, the questions addressed four types of violence: hitting someone first, hitting someone after they hit you, beating up someone, and attacking someone with a knife. High school students got the same four questions and also were asked if they had shot at someone with a gun.
"Threatening others infrequently or frequently ... was significantly associated with all five violent behaviors," the authors report.
While students who threaten infrequently were three to four times more likely to exhibit all five violent behaviors, the likelihood for violence by frequent threateners was substantially higher, especially for the more severe types of violence.
Students who threatened frequently were six to eight times more likely to hit someone who had hit them first. However, they were 14 to 23 times more likely than non-threateners to report having attacked someone with a knife and 17 times more likely to report having shot at someone.
"Teachers, guidance counselors, and principals need to take these threats seriously and to evaluate youngsters who threaten frequently for their potential for violence," Singer said. Such evaluations should be conducted using established protocols that look at the student's history of threat-making, previous violent behaviors, and earlier victimization. (See the accompanying list of screening tips.)
CWRU researcher Mark Singer offers the following tips to help parents and educators assess the risk of an adolescent becoming a perpetrator or victim of violence:
"Most professionals who work with children and adolescents recognize the imminent danger when a student threatens self-harm, and would not release such a child from their supervision until after the completion of a proper assessment for suicide potential," the authors write. "We believe a similar necessity for evaluation is required when children or adolescents threaten to harm others."
Similarly, children should be taught to tell a responsible adult if they know that someone is threatening to hurt another. "That parallels what we are already doing with children and suicide prevention," Singer said. "We teach them that if they know someone is threatening to hurt themselves, that is a secret they cannot keep."
Singer believes the study's large and diverse sample enhances its validity. The sample was comprised of three cohorts:
Across the three samples, the percentage of African-Americans ranged from 6 to 35 percent, Caucasians from 31 to 57 percent, and Hispanics from 5 to 51 percent. About half were male.
To request a copy of the journal article, contact Judith Bailey at 216-368-4442 or jcb4@po.cwru.edu .
Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine