Youth who are homeless and gay, lesbian or bisexual (GLB) are one of the most disenfranchised and marginalized groups in our society. The purpose of this study is to examine and compare HIV in GLB homeless youth with their heterosexual counterparts. Participants for this study included 268 youth involved in treatment outcome studies with substance…

The set of statistical methods available to developmentalists is continually being expanded, allowing for questions about change over time to be addressed in new, informative ways. Indeed, new developments in methods to model change over time create the possibility for new research questions to be posed. Latent transition analysis, a longitudinal…

Objective: Despite the widely held belief that abuse is a risk factor for childhood firesetting, the role of maltreatment in firesetting is largely unexplored. This study reports on a sample of children and adolescents referred to a brief assessment and intervention program for juvenile firesetters. Firesetting histories of maltreated youth were…

This article presents a re-conceptualization of moderate adolescent drug use. It is argued that experimentation with alcohol and other drugs during the teenage years may play an important role in the development of regulatory competency in relation to drug consumption in adulthood. When such regulatory skills fail to emerge in young people, during…

Extinction, a form of learning that has the ability to reshape learned behavior based on new experiences, has been heavily studied utilizing fear learning paradigms. Mechanisms underlying extinction of positive-valence associations, such as drug self-administration and place preference, are poorly understood yet may have important relevance to…

Our aim is to identify predictors of first-time ecstasy use in a prospective study among young people at risk. As part of the multidisciplinary Netherlands XTC Toxicity Study (NeXT), we monitored 188 subjects aged up to 18 years who were ecstasy-naive at baseline but seemed likely to start taking ecstasy in the near future. After an 11- to…

This article describes the social-emotional needs of Latino immigrant adolescents within an ecological framework. Most of the literature on Latino immigrants' mental health focuses on the pathology and emotional needs of adults, often neglecting the needs of adolescents. We argue that the needs of adolescent Latinos may differ dramatically from…

335 children of alcoholic and nonalcoholic fathers were examined to study the relation between childhood behavior trajectories and adolescent substance abuse. Findings suggested that children with both aggression and inattention/hyperactivity were at an increased risk of substance abuse when compared to children with only inattention/hyperactivity…

Despite a substantial proportion of high school students who initiate substance use following middle school, the implementation of universal evidence-based prevention curricula appears to be scant. We report data collected in 2005 from 1392 school district-based drug prevention coordinators, from a national, representative study of school-based…

This survey, "Life and Health--Young People 2005," included all 15/16-year-old adolescents in mainstream schools in the county of Orebro, Sweden. Just students with a slight/mild or moderate hearing loss were included. There were 56 (1.9%) "hard-of-hearing (HH) students with multiple disabilities," 93 (3.1%) students who were…

The Alcohol and Other Drug survey (adapted from D. Thombs, 1999) was administered to 235 undergraduates at a southeastern university to assess the influence that gender-specific normative perceptions have on 2 substance abuse patterns. Multiple regression analyses confirmed that gender-specific normative beliefs accounted for variance in alcohol…

Strong mental and behavioral health supports on campus can improve the academic performance of students and increase their resilience and ability to handle stress, with reduced suicide rates, substance abuse, and eating disorders, but this study reveals that students with mental health disabilities continue to face barriers to accessing counseling…

The current study examined mental health symptomology, substance use, and adaptive coping among 416 social work students following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Among participants, 47% scored at or above the clinical level for depression, with 6% of students showing clinical PTSD-like symptoms, and 16.9% reporting substance use. Two thirds (66.9%)…

Objective: To determine the rate and risk of clinical and personality disorders diagnosed in childhood and adulthood in those known to have been sexually abused during childhood. Methods: Forensic medical records of 2,759 sexually abused children assessed between 1964 and 1995 were linked with a public psychiatric database between 12 and 43 years…

Background: Despite the effectiveness of psychotropic treatment for alleviating symptoms of psychiatric disorders, youth adherence to psychotropic medication regimens is low. Adolescent adherence rates range from 10-80% (Swanson, 2003; Cromer & Tarnowski, 1989; Lloyd et al., 1998; Brown, Borden, and Clingerman, 1985; Sleator, 1985) depending on…