Juvenile justice and mental health: Youth and families in the middle

Addressing the mental health needs of youth in the juvenile justice system is a key imperative for all stakeholders interested in preventing and reducing juvenile delinquency. Despite the substantially higher rates of mental health disorders among these youth, services and approaches are fraught with barriers including inadequate assessment, fragmentation, and deficit-based intervention. Comprehensive, system-level reform is necessary to better address the needs of youth with mental health disorders entering the juvenile justice system. Using a public health approach to youth violence as an overarching framework, the need for a community-based, family-centered, strength-based system of care philosophy is outlined. D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Scope of the problem Community leaders, policymakers, funding agencies, and the public have begun to recognize that youth violence is a complex public health problem in this country (Commission for the Prevention of Youth Violence, 2000; Snyder & Sickmund, 1999; Thornton, Craft, Dahlberg, Lynch, & Baer, 2000). In 1997, 20% of all arrests involved a juvenile. Juveniles accounted for a large percentage of arrests for robbery (30%), vandalism (43%), and property crimes (35%), including arson (50%). The increase in juvenile violent 1359-1789/02/$ – see front matter D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S1359 -1789 (01 )00062 -3 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-336-334-4423. E-mail address: [email protected] (C. MacKinnon-Lewis). Aggression and Violent Behavior