Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/series/mental-health-2/page/2/)
It presents one of the most vexing challenges facing our nation’s juvenile courts and corrections systems: how to treat, supervise, punish or just plain cope with troubled teens whose delinquent behaviors are connected to or caused by emotional disturbances and mental health problems. Many recent studies concur that two-thirds or more of all youth confined in juvenile facilities nationwide suffer from one or more mental conditions, and perhaps one in five suffers from a serious and debilitating mental illness – far more than in the general youth population. Awareness of the mental health/juvenile justice challenge is rising. Still, all across the country juvenile justice systems are struggling to respond.
The process of destroying Sandy Hook Elementary School -- where last year Adam Lanza massacred 20 first-grade students and six teachers and staff -- began earlier in the year and is now nearly complete.
The Illinois DJJ and the ACLU have four months to review expert reports on the IDJJ’s psychological and mental health, educational, and safety and welfare services.
By middle school Nicole Mathis, now 30, had already been sent to youth "boot camp." Years later she is still scarred by the experience.
Is the Illinois DJJ providing adequate & required mental health and education services? Some are saying no.
Jaime has spent a year behind bars at Kewanee, where, at 14, he is the youngest inmate, and he has yet to be assessed by the prison, his mother says. Without an assessment he cannot receive more than the most basic therapy, and according to his mother, Jaime is not doing well.
A portrait of a troubled young man with a history of violent outbursts, trouble with the law, and mental illness that received, at best, sporadic treatment.
Too many kids are starting to use alcohol and drugs, addiction rates are soaring and lives are being destroyed. Now is the pivotal moment to bring these issues front and center.
Is Calif. lock-up deliberately and illegally depriving wards of education as part of a solitary-confinement regimen?
The de-emphasis of mental health funding is not an aberration across the United States. From 2009 until 2011, 31 states enacted major mental health budget cuts.
Grace Bauer had her entire world turned upside down when her son entered one of the nation’s harshest juvenile justice systems. Fueled by a burning desire to alter the system, she soon became one of the nation’s most impassioned crusaders for sweeping juvenile justice reform. Editor Note: This story is a continuation of the series Mental Health and the Juvenile Justice System: Progress, Problems and Paradoxes. Readers may also be interested in visiting the Juvenile Justice Resource HUB for more information about mental health and the juvenile justice system. --
The death of Grace Bauer's mother in 1998 triggered a cycle of grief that fully consumed her life for the better part of 15 years. “It became the mark we would measure time by,” she said. The pain, she said, was especially severe for her eldest child, Corey, who was 11 when his grandmother died.