Assessment of the Occurrence of Sibling Violence among Adolescent Siblings

Sibling violence can be defined as the intentional verbal, physical or psychological/emotional abuse inflicted by a sibling on another in a repeated pattern. The study aimed to assess the occurrence of verbal, physical and psychological/emotional violence among siblings. This descriptive study included 50 adolescent siblings aged 10 – 19 years residing in selected areas of Delhi selected using convenient sampling technique. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection. Results revealed that 70% of the samples had very low, 28% moderate and 2% had very high occurrence of sibling violence. The occurrence of verbal abuse was the highest followed by psychological abuse and then physical abuse. Results confirmed earlier studies’ findings that siblings engaged in a variety of violent acts directed towards one another. Nevertheless our study reaffirmed the observation that sibling violence is an understudied phenomenon and one which is worthy of more considerable attention. This study concludes with giving emphasis on the urgent need to screen adolescents for sibling violence, build awareness about sibling violence and educate families to differentiate between abusive and sibling rivalry. Effective parenting techniques should be deployed so that proper mental health services are provided at the earliest to the victims.