Understanding Violence: A Public Health Approach

• In 2016, there were 45,000 suicides.
• Suicide is a leading cause of death for people under 45.
• Over 13 million women experience non-fatal violence.

Forms of Violence

• Community: Occurs outside of homes involving strangers, like fights, assaults, and shootings.
• Intimate Partner Violence: Comes from a current or former partner or spouse.
• Sexual Violence: Any form of violence involving sexual activity without consent.
• Self-Directed Violence: Involves suicide attempts and completed suicides.
• Gender influences violence, with men more likely to be perpetrators and women more likely to be victims.
• Men complete more suicides, while women attempt more.
• Homicide is a leading cause of death for Black men and women.
• Certain communities face systemic inequalities.
• Violence often has roots in early childhood experiences.

Diagram Levels of Violence

• Individual includes mental health and substance abuse.
• Relationship includes childhood maltreatment.
• Community includes concentrated poverty and levels of incarceration.
• Societal includes systemic racism and sexism.

Preventing Violence Solutions

• Public strategies include behavioral interventions and early prevention programs.
• The Good Behavior Game rewards positive behaviors and collaboration among classmates.
• Targeted interventions tailor approaches to individuals through multi-systemic therapy.
• Structural interventions involve policies like the Cure Violence model, using people who have committed crimes to discourage others.

Addressing Trauma and Violence

• Health care providers can screen victims for sexual assault.
• The article recognizes the trauma experienced by survivors.
• Restorative justice repairs harm and holds offenders accountable.
• Finding the offender accountable and empowers the victim by creating space for dialogue.
• Violence is dependent on cultures.
• The goal aims to make amends at the community level.
• Suicide initiatives focus on prevention in health care.

Staircase to Terrorism - Psychological Process

• Begins with perceptions of unfairness, leading to feelings of being cheated or deprived compared to others, and has two forms of deprivation
• Egoistical: Feeling deprived as an individual
• Fraternal: Feeling deprived in a group

Solutions

• Two key factors determine if a person stays on the staircase or moves up: perceived mobility and procedural justice.
• Perceived Mobility: Opportunities for advancement in society.
• Procedural Justice: Fair decision-making process.
• Contextualized Democracy ensures democratic policies are fair for all individuals from different cultures.
• Scapegoating the West is a way to shift blame in terrorism.
• The third floor is where people encounter terrorist organizations, using "us vs. them" thinking.
• People join terrorist communities through family or persuasion via extremist thoughts.
• Prevention is crucial to preventing terrorism.
• The author emphasizes addressing root problems like poverty.
• Creating a fair justice system is also essential.
• Terrorism is complex and must be prevented by fostering equality.

Civilizing Process

• Suggests that as authority grows and people are forced to live together, emotional and instinctual controls change.

Key Takeaways

• Controlling violence is essential by external forces like the state and internal forces like self-restraint.
• Taming warriors is a key part of state formation where rulers gain dominance and pacify lands.
• The theory emphasizes social constraint toward self-constraint.
• Changes in behavior standards are not purely material or hygienic but involve competitive social display as state power grows.
• The process involves changes in emotional habits, with shame experienced toward acts once considered normal.
• Internal pacification is needed for effective warfare against rivals.
• Civilized life is fragile and can break under pressure.
• Violence in Western societies has a downward long-term trend despite periodic upsurges.
• The process doesn't imply a linear and inevitable decline of violence.

Risk Factors for Youth Violence

• Focuses on youth from 15-24, when violent behavior peaks
• Social isolation is a significant factor in mass shootings
• Risk factors include personal and environmental aspects
• Mental illness is often blamed for violence however this isn't true

Personal Risk Factors

• Gender, with males more violent due to societal expectations
• Early intervention like anger management classes can help
• Narcissism, sadism, and psychopathy, often involving a distorted self-perception

Environmental

• Easy access to guns increases gun violence
• Countries with stricter gun laws have lower gun violence levels
• Social exclusion/isolation can cause resentment and violence

Family/Neighborhood

• Learned behavior where kids seeing violence are more likely to be violent
• High crime rate communities normalize violence
• Media violence can cause aggression, especially in young people, reducing empathy

Schools

• Large schools can cause feelings of isolation

Common Misconceptions

• People with Mental Illness are more likely to be victims.
• Low self-esteem correlates to violence while in fact, a high ego leads to lash outs.
• Arming teachers can lead to accidental shootings/higher tension.
• The report says countering youth violence requires stricter gun laws and fostering environments of belonging in school.

Sacred Values & Violent Extremism

• What makes people willing to die for a cause.
• The willingness to fight can be an imponderable mystery
• Research discusses devoted actors that are individuals devoted to sacred values.
• Devoted actors hold certain values that don't allow them to compromise or negotiate their beliefs.
• Rational Choice Theory suggests that people act in their self-interest.
• Sacred values may be why some engage in extreme violence
• Excluded people hold on to sacred values more.
• Sacralization involves something becoming so important that nothing else matters.

Counter-Engagement

• Involves understanding conditions that make ideologies interesting.
• Understanding grievances, social dynamics, and psychological factors contributes to radicalization.
• Emphasizes addressing root causes is crucial.
• Empowering communities makes them more likely to listen and communicate.

Moral Logic of Suicide Terrorism

• Suicide attacks happen where more tourists go, tied to shared ideology, often formed online, with 80% of interactions outside the home.
• Terrorists have a rationale tied to deeply held beliefs, like a moral compass, integral to identity.
• Violation of sacred values triggers intense moral outrage.
• Human beings can commit violent acts when something sacred is threatened.
• Need awareness of different perspectives, such as the concept of honor.
• Unintentional actions can trigger unintended severe responses.
• Not about condoning violence, but about understanding motivations.
• Atron suggests a 3-pronged approach to counter this which involves Changing motivation of potential recruits, Disrupting sponsoring representatives, and Undermining their popular support.

Countering

• Profiling is useless because recruiters blend in.
• Instead, understand group dynamics (how they form), and monitor networks through subtle engagement.
• Intelligence in law enforcement must adopt a networked approach, disrupting the web of connections they have.
• Must use "soft power" such as compassion and addressing root causes.
• Holistic Approach Requires delving into grievances that drive terrorists to make extreme choices,
• It is a global and mental challenge.
• An empathetic approach is needed to counter terrorism.
• Empathy assists in our understanding the reason WHY NOT condoning violence.
• Must be aware of the dangers of stereotyping others with bias.

Aggression and Violence

• Involves the intent to seriously harm
• Any behavior intended to harm an individual who wishes to avoid that harm, verbal and physical are main forms.
• Relational aggression harms someone's social standing.
• Hostile aggression is driven by anger to inflict pain, while instrumental aggression uses it as a means to an end.
• Direct aggression where victim is present, and indirect aggression is where victim is absent.
• Displaced aggression is overreaction to something small.

General Aggression Model

• Aggression results from the interplay of person and situational factors.
• Depression and anxiety are linked to violence.
• Substance abuse impacts violence more than mental health
• Most with disorders are not violent, and may be victims to violence.
• Poverty and inequality increase violence.
• Poverty and inequality have a lot to do wiincrease in violence.

Solutions

• Social programs provides access to education and housing
• Understanding your own biases/don't assume someone is mentally ill
• Support Organizations helps with violence prevention.

Selective Moral Disengagement

• Shifts in thinking to justify your actions.

Justification categories

-Moral Justification reframes harmful acts for greater good. -Euphemistic Labeling makes something awful sound less awful. -Advantageous Comparison makes bad behavior sound okay compared to something worse.

• Displacement transfers responsibility to others.
• Diffusion spreads the blame to ignore ethics.
• Disregard ignores consequences and consequences
• Dehumanization strips victims of their humanity.
• Attribution of blame blames victims

Moral Engagement

• Humanization remembers everyone is a person -Social systems encourage empathy
• Everyone has good and evil moral capacities/Solution is to chose Moral engagement, awareness and learn to grow values

Analyze community violence scenarios and effective intervention strategies addressing societal inequities and violence's relationship with gender. Identify relationship-level interventions in public health programs and strategies reducing self-directed violence. Explore the civilizing process theory and internal pacification's relation to external warfare.