The "Handbook of Youth Prevention Science" describes current research and practice in mental health preventive interventions for youth. Traditional prevention research focused on preventing specific disorders, e.g. substance abuse, conduct disorders, or criminality. This produced "silos" of isolated knowledge about the…

Young offenders internationally have a higher incidence of mental health problems compared with adolescents in the general population. Mental health issues, particularly comorbid presentations, affect the response to and outcome of rehabilitation and hence recidivism of offending. Most information on the mental health of young offenders has…

The past decades have seen growth in numbers of children raised by grandparents without their parent at home, called skipped-generation grand-families. This mixed methods study examined statements made by 459 grandmothers about core family relationships between grandmother and child, grandmother and parent, and parent and child. Families were…

Many in Indian country have expressed that the trauma from the boarding school experience continues to terrorize the hearts of American Indians. Although much has been written about this history that looms so large in the North American indigenous experience, it remains an obscure topic in mainstream America. Dr. Eulynda J. Toledo, a member of the…

Some extant theory and empirical research suggests that youth problem behaviors, such as substance abuse and delinquency, reflect a single underlying dimension of behavior, whereas others suggest there are several different dimensions. Few studies have examined potential international differences in the structure of problem behavior, where…

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) includes questions to assess serious psychological distress (SPD) and substance use. SPD is an overall indicator of nonspecific psychological distress. This report examines serious psychological distress and substance use among young adult males aged 18 to 25, a relatively understudied group with…

This report compares young adult admissions to admissions of youths aged 12 to 17, who accounted for 8 percent of Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) admissions in 2004. The report further breaks down the young adult admissions into two subgroups: those aged 18 to 21 (9 percent of all admissions); and those aged 22 to 25 (12 percent of all…

This report details findings from the 2006 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) study of college student athletes, tracking their use of ergogenic drugs (steroids, ephedrine, amphetamine) and social drugs (alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and tobacco). It also includes data on where student athletes obtain drugs, their perceptions of drug…

Motivational interviewing (MI) is a brief intervention that has been shown to reduce heavy drinking among college students. Because all college studies of MI to date have included a personalized feedback report, it remains unclear which of the components is necessary to produce behavior change. This study evaluated the separate and collective…

Self-injurious behavior is the intentional harming of one's own body. Little attention has been given to SIB in the past, particularly in terms of innovative treatment approaches. Adolescents are at a particularly high-risk for developing this ineffectual coping mechanism. School counselors are in a unique position to aid in the identification of…

Problem: Greater awareness of the role of parental substance abuse in child maltreatment makes it imperative that the substance abuse treatment and child welfare systems coordinate services for these parents. Yet little is known about the characteristics of child-welfare involved parents (primarily mothers) who enter into substance abuse…

Adolescents with substance use and conduct disorders have high rates of aggression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), all of which have been characterized in part by impulsivity. Developing measures that capture impulsivity behaviorally and correlate with self-reported impulsivity has been difficult. One promising behavioral…

Adolescent females are disproportionately represented among reported cases of sexual victimization. Because sexual victimization is associated with an array of negative sequelae (e.g., depression, alcohol abuse), psychometrically sound instruments are urgently needed to assess sexual victimization or coercion. The investigation conducts a…

This study evaluates the effectiveness of a court-ordered Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) presentation to prevent alcohol or drug-related recidivism among 247 juvenile alcohol and drug offenders. The presentation, which incorporates educational components with a victim awareness program, seeks to increase offenders' empathy and knowledge…

Co-morbidity between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorders (SUD) is high and there is a need for empirically validated treatments designed to address PTSD among SUD patients. One effective PTSD treatment that may be useful in treating PTSD-SUD is exposure therapy. This paper reviews the relationship between comorbid PTSD…