Investigated whether correlates of substance use changed across historical time. A high degree of consistency was found across historical time in predictors of past month cigarette or alcohol use and past year marijuana or cocaine use. Some predictors were consistently linked to substance use. Consistency of other predictors was contingent upon…

Surveyed Ohio safe and drug-free school coordinators regarding their perceptions of how to improve safe and drug-free school programs. Training topics considered most beneficial included effective techniques for enhancing youth success, building parent-school-community partnerships, and providing conflict resolution skills. Lack of time and school…

Synthesizes articles in this special issue, highlighting the increasing public policy response to connecting child welfare and substance abuse services that will simultaneously serve children and their families affected by substance abuse. Considers challenges faced by these cooperative efforts, including the need to improve administrative data,…

Examined differences between the visibility of drugs and drug use in over 2000 neighborhoods, surveying residents regarding drug- and alcohol-related behaviors and attitudes and comparing the responses of poor, urban, African Americans versus people from comparison neighborhoods. The most disadvantaged neighborhoods had the most visible drug…

Evaluated predictors of therapy attendance in a sample of substance abusing youth in two southwestern runaway shelters. Runaway youth and their families were engaged into a 15-session ecologically-based family therapy (EBFT) intervention. Fewer days between pretreatment assessment and first therapy session predicted more sessions attended. No…

Presents a detailed overview of the Family Empowerment Intervention (FEI), a system-oriented intervention delivered in-home by well-trained nontherapists. A clinical trial of FEI targeted arrested youths and their families. Topics covered included: theoretical foundations and goals of FEI, structural intervention strategies, and phases of the…

This study describes Australian media portrayal of mental illnesses, focusing on depression. A random sample of 1,123 items was selected for analysis from a pool of 13,389 nonfictional media items about mental illness collected between March 2000 and February 2001. Depression was portrayed more frequently than other mental illnesses. Items about…

In this article a historical overview of the evolution of the Women's Trauma Integrated Services model at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is presented. Milestones in women's services policy development at SAMHSA (1992-1998) and in trauma treatment development for four different trauma populations (1960-1998)…

This article describes the relationship between learning disabilities (LD) and homelessness. Research describing the connection between disabilities and homelessness has focused on individuals presenting with disabilities such as mental illness, physical disabilities, medical disabilities, or substance abuse. At this time, the presence of LD in…

As First Lady of the United States, Laura Bush is leading the Helping America's Youth initiative of the federal government. She articulates the goal of enlisting public and volunteer resources to foster healthy growth by early intervention and mentoring of youngsters at risk. Helping America's Youth will benefit children and teenagers by…

Maltreatment in the family occurs through a variety of forms of abuse and neglect. These risks are particularly prevalent in families with parents who abuse substances. The author describes connections between parental addiction and coping behaviors used by the children in these high-risk families. Strength-based strategies enable these youth to…

This article investigates the life conditions that contribute to low-income fathers' depression and that may jeopardize their relationships with their children. This work is based on a cultural-ecological framework that emphasizes the need to understand these fathers within their larger familial and social contexts. The sample consisted of 127…

Presented is a conceptual framework linking the construct of temperament with environmental factors that covary with the onset and escalation of substance use. We propose that transactions between temperament characteristics of the child in family and peer contexts influence the development of self-control ability, a mediating factor for onset and…

We examined the associations among gender, antisocial behavior, and peer-group affiliation in a high-risk sample of 401 homeless and matched housed adolescents (139 boys and 262 girls). The Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (Version 2.3, 1991; Costello, Edelbrock, Kalas, Kessler, & Klaric, 1982) yielded 2 measures of adolescent antisocial…

The dependence construct fills an important explanatory role in motivational accounts of smoking and relapse. Frequently used measures of dependence are either atheoretical or grounded in a unidimensional model of physical dependence. This research creates a multidimensional measure of dependence that is based on theoretically grounded motives for…