‘It’s a deep emotional ride’ – 12 young people in Philly’s hardest neighborhoods explain how violence disrupts their physical and mental health

In 2023, 410 people were murdered in Philadelphia – greater than 1 / 4 of them under age 25. In addition to the individuals who died, countless others lost family members and other people they relied on.

As a social scientist who studies different types of violence and the way they affect an individual’s health, I do know that the violence young people in Philadelphia experience is about greater than shootings, homicides and physical injuries. Social science recognizes many differing types of violence beyond the physical – for instance, poverty, racism and negative interactions with police.

Furthermore, violence can take a toll on one’s health even when the person is unaware of it. For example, I once interviewed a young man from West Philadelphia and tracked his heart rate. When a shooting occurred outside his front room window, his heart rate spiked suddenly from 51 beats per minute and hit 116. He had heard the gunshot, however it didn’t upset him. He felt he had been hardened to the violence happening in front of his door, and he was shocked to learn that his body had reacted so strongly.

To higher understand the connection between types of violence and their impacts, I conducted an ethnographic study involving 12 young people ages 16 to 21 who lived in numerous Philadelphia neighborhoods where violence is prevalent. These included Kensington, the Northeast, Germantown, Cobbs Creek and Belmont. The study lasted from 2016 to 2018 and was recently published within the peer-reviewed Journal of Adolescent Research. The names utilized in this text are pseudonyms to guard the identities of the young individuals who contributed to my research.

I spent a month with each young person. I walked through their neighborhoods with them, interviewed them about their family histories and measured their heart rates as they went about their day. They wore wristband health monitors and carried a separate GPS tracker for 4 days. At the top of every day, I sat with them and reviewed their heart rate data and where they went.

I learned that where a teenager lives, the societal messages they absorb and the several types of violence they experience can deeply affect their physical and mental health.

‘No shade, no trees, no big parks’

The young people I worked with understood the shortage of investments of their neighborhoods as signals that those in power didn’t care about them, their families or their communities. They talked about public school closuresthe limited access to libraries and lack of trees or green space. Walking with me round her Cobbs Creek neighborhood, Desmond, 21, said, “Who would need to live here? There’s no shade, no trees, no big parks.”

They also saw how gentrification – the technique of wealthier individuals and investments displacing local businesses and residents – was changing their neighborhoods. Kalia, having lived her life in “little Puerto Rico,” as she called her Kensington neighborhood, told me how she felt about wealthier people moving in.

“Remember how I used to be saying that we’re loud, and we’re all like close to one another, all of us just hang around and stuff? And they’re not like that. They’re quiet, they usually have all their money, you recognize?” she said. “So I feel like they’re not only trying to alter the neighborhood, they’re just trying to alter the best way people live.”

‘I can’t blame them, though’

Working with the five young Black men within the study, I learned how their day-to-day interactions with the police impacted their self-worth. They shared experiences of police slamming them against a wall, knocking food out of their hands, refusing to consider they didn’t have a criminal record or chasing them out of parks.

In sharing these interactions, it was clear that several of the young men had internalized false messages from society and culture that Black men commit more crimes and act more aggressively than white people. Kareem, from West Philadelphia, summed up his thoughts on it like this: “If you was a criminal, then they probably treat you in a certain way. But since almost every Black person be stepping into almost all the things, they think all of us criminals. I can’t blame them, though.”

Future, from Southwest Philly, had a very tense interaction with police and got here into an interview feeling, he said, “overestimated.” His heart rate had increased from 60 to 106 beats per minute when approached by the police, after which elevated to 130 BPM inside 10 minutes. It remained elevated for half-hour.

While walking to our interview, Future told me, he had stopped to spend the last of his money on a breakfast sandwich and a coffee. Shortly after, a police officer knocked the sandwich out of his hand, pushed him against a wall and handcuffed him. “They thought I had dope, weed and pills on me, after which I’m like, ‘I don’t got nothing,’” he said. They asked him for his ID, to which he countered, “Why you bought me in cuffs?” Then they threatened to bring him into the station.

“Listen, I’m being obedient,” Future told the officers, explaining that he was on probation. After police “threw” him at the back of the automobile, he said, a neighbor began filming the incident and asked the police what they were doing. Future said the younger cop reached for his gun while his partner “tried to get me to rat on my ‘hood.”

The purpose of the police encounter, it seemed, was to achieve information in regards to the goings on within the neighborhood. The young men I talked with said they’d often had similar experiences.

‘It’s a deep emotional ride’

Whether it was through experiencing police brutality, the kid welfare system, homelessness or past trauma, each of the young people I worked with grappled with the impacts of interpersonal, structural and symbolic violence in alternative ways. Sometimes it was apparent of their mental health, manifesting in eating disorders, severe anxiety or bouts of depression.

Conner, a young Black man living in Belmont, experienced severe anxiety that at times kept him from leaving his house. His heart rate would spike on public transit, sometimes reaching 150 BPM, as he apprehensive about neighborhood arguments spilling over onto the bus. He would go to the gym late at night to avoid fights, and he talked in regards to the friends he had lost to gun violence. On how he felt about these losses, he said, “It’s a deep emotional ride, but I mean, the vast majority of us, people of color, we’re used to things like that occuring.”

For others, their physical health suffered as well. One young woman, as an example, had witnessed severe violence in her home during her childhood and had been involved with the kid welfare system each as a baby and as a mother. She struggled with hypertension, severe headaches, obesity and anxiety. She lamented that getting care was just out of reach, particularly for her mental health. Every time she began to connect with a therapist, she said, either the middle would close or the therapist would go away.

The research is obvious that childhood trauma results in higher rates of early morbidity and health ailments resembling cardiovascular disorders. But it was striking to see these symptoms starting amongst people still of their teenage years.

Holistic interventions

Society typically tries to scale back violence by fixing individual behaviors – using metal detectors to curb weapons, for instance, or creating mentoring programs for people deemed at-risk for violence.

I consider a more holistic approach would go further. Libraries, parks and community centers promote education, physical activity and social cohesion for kids in high-poverty neighborhoods. Connecting individuals with jobs that pay a living wage helps them maintain an honest quality of life and increase their self-worth. Investing in quality mental health services in neighborhoods that lack them can provide young individuals with the skilled support they need to process their environment and what is occurring around them.

In short, recognizing that violence is available in many forms, and requires multiple levels of intervention, could make a world of difference.