Dr. Markus J. Kruesi

The CCC created the proposed Community Youth Strategy, which has been reviewed by a select committee of individuals with expertise in youth issues including: Dr. Markus Kruesi - Director, Institute for Juvenile Research (University of Illinois at Chicago); Susan Herr - Director of Children and Family Initiatives, Chicago Community Trust; and Emil Syngel - Executive Director, Union League Boys and Girls Clubs to name only a few.

In the same article, Markus Kreusi, M.D., chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Illinois Institute for Juvenile Research, said that low serotonin levels in children and adolescents increase their risk for violence.

Markus Kreusi, M.D. Director, Institute for Juvenile Research University of Illinois at Chicago

"What we are all beginning to conclude is that the bad environments that more and more children are being exposed to are, indeed, creating an epidemic of violence," says Dr. Markus J. Kruesi of the University of Illinois Institute for Juvenile Research.

"What we are all beginning to conclude is that the bad environments that more and more children are being exposed to are, indeed, creating an epidemic of violence," says Dr. Markus J. Kruesi of the University of Illinois Institute for Juvenile Research."Environmental events are really causing molecular changes in the brain that make people more impulsive."Such factors as "the collapse of the family structure, the surge in single parenting, persistent poverty, and chronic drug abuse can actually tip brain chemistry into an aggressive mode-an effect that was once thought impossible," says the book Inside the Brain.

The changes in the brain, it is claimed, include the lowering of the level of serotonin, a brain chemical that is thought to keep aggression at bay.Studies reveal that alcohol can lower the level of serotonin in the brain, thereby giving some scientific basis for the long-known link between violence and the abuse of alcohol.