Lack of Expertise, Inadequate Funding Plaguing Mental Health Delivery to Nation’s Juvenile Justice System
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Are young people in the juvenile justice system with mental health disorders being properly diagnosed and treated?
Amid Widespread Inaction on Evidence-Based Care for Troubled and Delinquent Youth, a Few States Get it Right
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In a pair of feature stories published yesterday, (on Georgia's reform efforts and issues and two young men in the system) JJIE described two modes of intensive at-home treatment that show great promise to improve outcomes for emotionally disturbed youth in the delinquency system, both of which cost far less than incarceration or treatment in a residential treatment center.
Expanding Evidence-Based Treatment for Georgia’s Troubled Youth: Everyone Agrees… Except the Budget
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Georgia leaders are embracing reform in juvenile justice, but serious gaps and significant roadblocks still prevent many emotionally-troubled youth from receiving the best and most cost-effective care.
Termaine and Elijah: Two Troubled Teens and the Promise of Intensive, At-Home Family-Focused Treatment
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Over the past three decades, adolescent development scholars, criminologists and mental health practitioners have achieved a breakthrough – or rather two breakthroughs. They have developed two different approaches to the care and supervision of troubled and delinquent children that consistently work better and cost less than correctional confinement and other commonplace services. One approach, which involves intensive and highly-regimented family therapy delivered to young people in their own homes, has been rigorously tested in scientific evaluations and repeatedly yielded substantial and statistically significant reductions in recidivism and treatment/confinement costs. The second – known as wraparound – targets youth with serious emotional disturbances, and it assembles a team of caring adults to devise an appropriate mix of community-based services in lieu of placing the child into a residential facility. Numerous studies show that wraparound, too, improves behavioral health and reduces involvement in the justice system – and does so at a fraction of the cost of confinement or residential treatment.
Long Wait for Mental Health Services for Youth in Nation’s Capital
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A Children’s Law Center report released last week finds that young people in Washington, D.C. are not receiving speedy assistance from the District’s mental health services.
Ten Years After a Landmark Study, Progress and Challenges in Mental Health Treatment for Nation’s Confined Youth
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In 2010, the federal Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention released results from the first-ever nationally representative survey of youth confined in juvenile justice facilities. However, because interviews were conducted in 2003, the findings beg the question: What changes have occurred since 2003 in mental health care for confined youth?
Traumatic Pasts, Urgent Counseling Needs, Inadequate Services: Findings from the First Ever National Survey of Juveniles in Custody
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How many young people confined in the juvenile justice system need treatment for mental health and substance problems, and how well are those needs being met? The Survey of Youth in Residential Placement (SYRP) – the first-ever national survey of youth in juvenile custody – offers a detailed, if slightly dated, window into these issues using information obtained from young people themselves. See related story here. Conducted in 2003, SYRP gathered data from a nationally representative sample of youth housed in state and local juvenile facilities. Not released until 2010, the SYRP data show that many young people confined in juvenile facilities had experienced trauma, and most suffered with one or more mental health or substance abuse problems. Yet many confined youth received no counseling in their facilities.
After Years of Slow Progress, Illinois Finds Traction In Efforts to Meet Needs of Mentally Ill Youth
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Early in 2000, after a groundbreaking study revealed epidemic levels of mental illness among detained youth in Cook County – plus a severe lack of counseling and treatment – the Illinois Department of Human Services launched an ambitious new Mental Health and Juvenile Justice Initiative.
Significant Steps, and Gaps, in Cook County’s Drive for Mental Health Care for Delinquent Youth
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A century after Cook County, Illinois launched the world’s very first separate court system for juveniles accused of delinquency, a study found more than half of the young people in the county's juvenile lock-up suffered from at least one mental health disorder.
New Therapy Proves Effective for Juvenile Sex Offenders
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How big a difference can new evidence-based treatment methods make in the cases of juvenile offenders with mental health problems? In Cook County, Illinois, juvenile court leaders decided to find out. Specifically, they agreed to participate in a randomized controlled experiment to test the impact of Multisystemic Therapy (MST) – a prominent new treatment methodology – against the court’s usual services for youth accused or adjudicated for juvenile sex offenses. The study, published in 2009, involved 127 youth accused of sex offenses and ordered by the court to attend sex offender treatment. Sixty-seven were assigned to MST, and 60 were assigned to Cook County probation department’s existing juvenile sex offender unit and required to take part in weekly sex offender treatment groups.