It is well known that many children and adolescents entering the juvenile justice system suffer from serious mental disorders. Yet until now, few resources have been available to help mental health and juvenile justice professionals accurately identify the mental health needs of the youths in their care. Filling a crucial gap, this volume offers a practical primer on screening and assessment together with in-depth reviews of over 20 widely used instruments. Comprehensive and timely, it brings together leading experts to provide authoritative guidance in this challenging area of clinical practice. Grounded in extensive research and real world practical experience, this is an indispensable reference for clinical and forensic psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists, as well as juvenile justice administrators and others who work with youths in the justice system. An informative resource for students, it is an ideal supplemental text for graduate-level courses.
Presents information on identifying, screening, and assessing adolescents who use substances. This report focuses on the most current procedures and instruments for detecting substance abuse among adolescents, conducting comprehensive assessments, and beginning treatment planning. Presents appropriate strategies and guidelines for screening and assessment. Explains legal issues concerning Federal and State confidentiality laws. Provides guidance for screening and assessing adolescents in juvenile justice settings. Summarizes instruments to screen and assess adolescents for substance and general functioning domains.
It is well known that many children and adolescents entering the juvenile justice system suffer from serious mental disorders. Yet until now, few resources have been available to help mental health and juvenile justice professionals accurately identify the mental health needs of the youths in their care.
1. Youth with mental health disorders in the juvenile justice system-- 2. The diagnosis of mental health disorders-- 3. The oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder-- 4. Mood disorders : major depression, dysthymic disorder and bipolar disorder-- 5. Attention-deficit - hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)-- 6. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)-- 7. Developmental disorders : mental retardation, learning disorders and fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)-- 8. Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders-- 9. Substance use disorders : substance abuse and substance dependence-- 10. Co-occuring mental health and substance use disorders -- 11. Suicidal behaviour among juvenile offenders-- 12. Self-injurious behaviour among juvenile offenders-- 13. Screening and assessment of juvenile offenders with mental health disorders-- 14. Treatment of juvenile offenders with mental health disorders-- 15. Special issues 1 : minority youth, female offenders, homosexual youth-- 16. Special issues 2 : head trauma - neuropsychiatric factors, violence and mental illness, seclusion and restraint, malingering, staff training.
This book serves as a practical guide for clinicians and other professionals working with children and adolescents exposed to trauma, offering an overview and rationale for a comprehensive approach to trauma-informed assessment, including key domains and techniques. Building on more than 2 decades of work in collaboration with the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), the book provides strategies for conducting an effective trauma-informed assessment that can be used in practice to support the treatment planning and intervention process, family engagement and education, and collaboration and advocacy with other providers. As part of APA's Division 56 series, Concise Guides on Trauma Care, the book surveys a range of recommended tools and considerations for selecting and implementing those tools across stages of development and in relation to a child's sociocultural context. The authors also examine challenges that may arise in the context of trauma-informed assessment and suggest approaches to overcome those barriers.
Research indicates that many youth who come into contact with the juvenile justice system may have mental health and substance use related disorders. Problems related to these conditions play a continuing role in delinquency and pose risks to the welfare of youth, juvenile justice staff, and others. Identifying troubled youth is the first step in providing them with appropriate treatment. Early, accurate identification of youth with mental disorders in the juvenile justice system is a critical need. Once identified, these youth can receive the services required to improve their lives, reduce recidivism rates, and promote community safety. To take that first step, juvenile justice professionals need reliable screening and assessment instruments and practical guidance in their effective use. This Resource Guide is intended as a basic tool for juvenile justice professionals working toward this goal and offers a comprehensive, user friendly synthesis of current information on instruments that can be used to screen and assess youth for mental health and substance use related disorders at various stages of the juvenile justice process. The Guide includes profiles of more than 50 instruments, guidelines for selecting instruments, and best practice recommendations for diverse settings and situations. It also offers clinicians and other professionals working with youth in the juvenile justice system a range of best practice information that will assist in better identifying youth with mental health disorders, thus ultimately improving their treatment. Reviews and summaries of information about the most effective instruments for screening and assessing youth for mental health and substance use disorders at various points in the juvenile justice system are included and it also provides examples of a variety of models and approaches that have been developed to use available instruments.
Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.
