News
Psychological Bulletin paper by recent ICD grad and current students explores impact of community violence on health
New in the prestigious journal Psychological Bulletin is an article called "Exposure to community violence and biomarkers of allostatic load: A systematic review and meta-analysis." This study is the work of lead author Bria Gresham, PhD ’25, who submitted the paper while she was a doctoral student at ICD. Gresham is now a faculty instructor who runs a research program in the Department of Psychology and Biobehavioral Sciences at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Fellow ICD doctoral students Mirinda Morency, Frederique Corcoran, and Jacob Kunkel are Gresham’s coauthors, along with Amy Riegelman, who is a social science librarian at University of Minnesota Libraries.
For this study, Gresham and her coauthors sought to understand how exposure to community violence impacts physiological functioning for youth. Exposure to community violence is defined as “being the witness or victim of deliberate physical acts of violence intended to cause harm outside of the home or in the community.” Personally experiencing threats or violence is one type of exposure. Exposure can also include hearing about violent incidents in the community.
Researchers don’t yet know how exposure to community violence affects young people’s development or their health outcomes. But they do know that our health is affected by allostatic load. Allostatic load is defined as psychological and physical wear and tear from lived experiences and events. Scientists gauge allostatic load by looking at biomarkers of stress, such as hormones like cortisol. These biomarkers may serve as mechanisms through which violence affects health.
There are competing theories about how chronic stress impacts cortisol levels. Some studies have found that chronic stress causes elevated cortisol production, called hyperreactivity. Others have found the opposite—a “blunted” cortisol response known as hyporeactivity. Gresham and her coauthors decided to look at existing research on the relationship between community violence and biomarkers of allostatic load. They did a systematic review of 36 studies and a meta-analysis that combined the results of 17 of those studies.
“We wanted to know what these studies said collectively about whether community violence actually ‘gets under the skin’ to affect physiological health,” says Gresham. “And we also wanted to know whether cortisol hyperreactivity or hyporeactivity was more likely.”
Photo Courtesy of Bria Gresham
Their analysis showed that on average, greater exposure to violence was associated with cortisol hyporeactivity.
“Both hyperreactivity and hyporeactivity are ways that the body adapts to circumstances,” Gresham explains. “But they have downstream effects.”
For example, cortisol hyperreactivity comes with an increased risk of hypertension and coronary artery disease. Hyporeactivity is connected with posttraumatic stress symptoms and depressive symptoms.
“Our findings suggest that people who are exposed to community violence are at greater risk for altered patterns of physiological functioning, increasing the risk of health issues like depression and anxiety,” says Gresham. “This highlights the need for meaningful policies to prevent exposure to community violence.”
Thank you to Sarah Pan for assistance preparing this article.