Psychosocial adjustment in middle eastern adolescents: the relative impact of violent vs. non-violent social disorganization.

The relationship between extreme social change and the psychological adjustment of adolescents undergoing such change was examined. The impact of extreme social change relative to other conditions of catastrophic social disorganization such as chronic social conflict and violent war-like conditions was also considered. The results indicate that Bedouin adolescents in Israel, members of a community that has experienced drastic social upheaval, show elevated rates of psychopathology. Comparisons of Bedouin adolescents to Palestinian adolescents from the West Bank and Gaza suggest that for older adolescents the impact of extreme social change on mental health adjustment generally parallels that of both chronic social conflict (West Bank) and that of violent war-like conditions (Gaza). However, this pattern did not hold for younger adolescents. In the Bedouin community, younger adolescents demonstrated significantly less adverse impact on adjustment than older adolescents, while such differences did not hold in the West Bank and Gaza. Thus the findings suggest a continuum of adverse impact of the types of social disorganization examined and a possible interaction between type of social disorganization and organismic variables such as age and gender.