Family Violence Exposure and Its Association with Emotional Stability and Behavioral Adjustment Among College Students

Family violence may affect psychological well-being beyond the early stages of development, even affecting how individuals navigate their way into higher education. The present paper aims to examine its relationship with emotional stability and adjustment via a focused narrative review of scientific peer-reviewed literature. Altogether, twelve pieces of scientific literature are chosen due to their pertinence to family violence, childhood adversity, college student adjustment, emotion regulation and psychological assessment. The studies of college students will serve as primary evidence, whereas studies of children, adolescents and adults are used for developmental context. Family violence is found to be correlated with psychological distress, posttraumatic stress symptoms, as well as with emotional and behavioral challenges. For example, one undergraduate study found that 203 out of 1,452 participants had experienced physical interparental aggression during childhood. In another study involving 1,969 university students, witnessing and experiencing family violence was associated with increased posttraumatic stress symptoms. According to meta-analyses, there is a medium correlation between family violence and the development of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. However, it needs to be noted that psychological distress and emotion dysregulation cannot be taken as proxies of emotional stability as a personality trait.