Family Influences on the Long Term Post-Disaster Recovery of Puerto Rican Youth

This study focused on characteristics of the family environment that may mediate the relationship between disaster exposure and the presence of symptoms that met DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for symptom count and duration for an internalizing disorder in children and youth. We also explored how parental history of mental health problems may moderate this mediational model. Approximately 18 months after Hurricane Georges hit Puerto Rico in 1998, participants were randomly selected based on a probability household sample using 1990 US Census block groups. Caregivers and children (N?=?1,886 dyads) were interviewed with the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children and other questionnaires in Spanish. Areas of the family environment assessed include parent-child relationship quality, parent-child involvement, parental monitoring, discipline, parents’ relationship quality and parental mental health. SEM models were estimated for parents and children, and by age group. For children (4–10 years old), parenting variables were related to internalizing psychopathology, but did not mediate the exposure-psychopathology relationship. Exposure had a direct relationship to internalizing psychopathology. For youth (11–17 years old), some parenting variables attenuated the relation between exposure and internalizing psychopathology. Family environment factors may play a mediational role in psychopathology post-disaster among youth, compared to an additive role for children. Hurricane exposure had a significant relation to family environment for families without parental history of mental health problems, but no influence for families with a parental history of mental health problems.     

Relationships Among Emerging Adult Psychological Problems,Maltreatment, and Parental Psychopathology: Moderation by Parent–Child Relationship Quality

Current research supports clear relationships between parental psychopathology, parental maltreatment, and emerging adult child psychopathology. Less research has examined how the role of the parent–child relationship influences these existing associations. The current study tested two models that examined the moderating effect of parent–child relationship quality on parental psychopathology and emerging adult mental health as well as the effect on parental maltreatment and emerging adult mental health. It was expected that high parent–child relationship quality would buffer against the negative effects of parental psychopathology and maltreatment while enhancing the effects of functional parenting characteristics. Participants included 1,452 emerging adults, predominantly Caucasian (73.3%) college students who completed surveys on their mental health, recent experienced maltreatment, and their parents’ mental health problems. Results suggested lowest rates of mental health problems for emerging adults were associated with higher parent–child relationship quality and lower parental psychological problems, whereas negative outcomes were associated with higher parental psychopathology, regardless of parent–child relationship quality. Additionally, physical maltreatment was associated with lower rates of mental health concerns in the context of higher mother-daughter relationship quality. Results emphasize the continuing impact of the parent–child relationship, particularly the mother-daughter relationship, on emerging adults’ mental health. Moreover, the current study demonstrates the continuing influence of parents on their emerging adult children.     

From Mental Health to Juvenile Justice: What Factors Predict This Transition?

We identify youth who are at risk for a critical transition from mental health to juvenile justice. A statewide longitudinal sample of Medicaid-eligible youth (aged 10–17) in the public mental health system (n = 5,455), during approximately one fiscal year (July 1, 1994–August 30, 1995), was used to determine the risk factors for, and timing of, a subsequent juvenile justice detention or commitment during the three subsequent fiscal years (1994–1997). Logistic regression and Cox Proportional Hazards modeling were used. Risk factors for juvenile justice detention or commitment included being: male, black or Hispanic, in junior high school, involuntarily admitted to mental health, having a DSM-IV diagnosis of conduct disorder, alcohol problems, a constellation of risk behavior, and receiving prior mental health services. Factors that accelerate the timing of detention or commitment in the juvenile justice system after a mental health visit included most of the general risk factors except risk behavior and involuntary admission were no longer significant and having a DSM-IV nonalcohol drug use diagnosis, antisocial behavior, and school problems became significant. Our study helps to identify youth who are at risk for multiple system use so that they may be provided appropriate services to prevent multiple system use.     

Differential relationships in the association of the Big Five personality traits with positive mental health and psychopathology

According to the two continua model of mental health, psychopathology and positive mental health (emotional, psychological, and social well-being) are related but distinct continua. This study investigates the two continua model by examining whether psychopathology and positive mental health show differential associations with the Big Five personality traits. The paper draws on data of the representative LISS panel (CentERdata). Participants (N = 1161; age 18-88) filled out questionnaires on personality, psychopathology, and positive mental health. Personality traits were differentially related to psychopathology and positive mental health, supporting the two continua model. Emotional stability (reversed neuroticism) is the main correlate of psychopathology, whereas the personality traits extraversion and agreeableness are uniquely associated with positive mental health.     

Perceptions of Juvenile Offenders Who Were Abused as Children

Should a history of child abuse be taken into consideration when a juvenile offender is punished? Although some research shows that child abuse is used as a mitigating factor for juvenile offenders (i.e., elicits less punitive sentences), surveys of juvenile court officials reveal that it is considered an aggravating factor. Specifically, in controlled mock jury studies in which child abuse is experimentally manipulated, child abuse elicits less punitive sentences. In contrast, child abuse elicits more punitive sentences in a nonexperimentally controlled environment—the juvenile justice system. This article provides a comprehensive literature review to explain these conflicting bodies of research by considering factors that naturally covary with childhood abuse: chaotic family environment, mental health problems, behavioral problems, and school problems.     

The contribution of temperament, childhood neglect, and abuse to the development of personality dysfunction: a comparison of three models

We examined the contribution of temperament, childhood neglect, and abuse to the development of personality dysfunction as postulated in three different but correlated models of personality: the psychobiological, Vaillant's psychoanalytic, and DSM psychopathology models. Character, defense style, and personality disorder symptomatology (the dependent variables), and temperament, childhood neglect, and abuse (the independent variables) were assessed in 168 depressed outpatients. High harm avoidance (temperament) tended to be the strongest and most consistent risk factor across the three models. Deficient parental care predicted personality dysfunction, however low care was not consistently predictive across all three models. Emotional/psychological abuse and actual physical abuse were risk factors for increasing personality disorder symptomatology only. Childhood sexual abuse was not as predictive of personality dysfunction as might be expected, thereby raising questions as to the importance placed on child sexual abuse as a general risk factor for personality psychopathology.     

The Relationship Between Family Stress and Behavioral Health Among African American Adolescents

African American youth, especially those who live in low-income communities, are at increased risk for experiencing higher juvenile justice involvement, poorer mental health, low school engagement, higher illicit drug use, and STIs, relative to their higher income peers and those from other ethnic backgrounds. However, few studies have examined the relationship between family stressors and these multiple youth concerns. This study examines the relationship between family stress (i.e., having an adult in the home with a history of mental illness, substance use, and incarceration) and youth concerns such as substance use, mental health challenges, low school engagement, juvenile justice involvement, and STI risk behaviors. A total of 638 African American adolescents living in predominantly low-income, urban communities participated in the study by completing self-report measures on the above constructs. Logistic regressions controlling for age, gender, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation indicated that adolescents who reported higher rates of family stress were significantly more likely to report mental health problems, delinquent behaviors, juvenile justice involvement, drug use, risky sex, and lower school engagement factors. Findings suggest that attending to the developmental concerns of youth also requires addressing the needs of the family unit.     

Predictors of Sentencing Decisions: The Beliefs, Personality Variables, and Demographic Factors of Juvenile Justice

The role of beliefs, personality variables, and demographic factors in the sentencing of juvenile offenders was investigated. The subjects (1,030 members of the juvenile justice system) judged hypothetical juvenile perpetrators. Various personality, belief, and demographic variables were found to be related to sentencing severity; these relationships differed based on the type of crime judged. Further, relations among these variables and sentencing behavior indicated three coherent patterns or resonances. A liberal group of individuals, believing in rehabilitation, external causality of crime, a positive prognosis for the perpetrator, and nontraditional views of women, sentenced moderately. Two types of conservative individuals were defined. Both groups were punitive, and believed in internal causality of crime; however, they differed on attitudes toward women, needs for cognition, and beliefs about seriousness and harm. One group sentenced the most severely and the other the most leniently. Implications for the sentencing of juvenile offenders are discussed.     

Comparing the mental health needs of female and male incarcerated juvenile delinquents

The present study was undertaken to survey the prevalence of mental disorder in juvenile justice facilities and to compare the mental health needs for females and males. Girls displayed significantly more mental health needs than boys. The estimated prevalence of mental disorder for boys was 27%, compared with 84% for girls. The difference is highly significant and is discussed in terms of service system issues in juvenile justice that affect males and females differently. ©1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mental Health and Incarcerated Youth. II: Service Utilization

The incarceration of mentally ill youth is a serious problem not receiving the same attention as in adults. In this study, we examine the level of prior service utilization in incarcerated youth versus youth receiving community mental health services. We randomly recruited youth from middle South Carolina served by a local community mental health center (CMHC; n = 60), hospitalized in the state adolescent inpatient program (n = 50), and incarcerated in the S.C. Dept. of Juvenile Justice facilities (n = 75). We used a Services History to evaluate episodes of prior utilization of mental health, social service, educational, residential, and volunteer services, as well as the DISC-PC 2.3 to evaluate DSM-III-R diagnoses and symptoms and the CBCL and YSR to evaluate behavioral symptomatology. Incarcerated, hospitalized, and CMHC youth utilized similar levels of educational services and social services. Incarcerated youth had a significantly lower lifetime utilization of outpatient and acute mental health services and significantly higher utilization of out-of-home residential services than the other groups. These services utilization variables, along with gender and age, significantly distinguish incarcerated youth from the clinical groups, with clinical variables not serving to significantly distinguish them. Our results indicate the need to develop programs to prevent the entry of mentally ill/emotionally disturbed youth into the juvenile justice system. Youth who are at risk for incarcenation may benefit from intensive mental health services to prevent out-of-home placement and later incarceration.     

Connecting the Dots through a Case Report: A Child’s Unmet Needs,Neuropsychological Impairment and Entrance into the Juvenile Justice System

ABSTRACT

Adolescent involvement in the criminal and juvenile justice systems has received widespread attention at national, state, and local levels. Developmental neuroscience has shaped our understanding of adolescence as a distinct period during which young people are at increased risk for a host of problems, especially entrance into the criminal and juvenile justice systems. Overrepresentation of Black and Latino youth, particularly those with disabilities, remains of significant concern. This case study explores the case of a 13-year-old boy, Trey (a fictional name), and his path into the school-to-prison pipeline. The roles of neighborhood, family poverty, parental health, trauma, chronic stress, and attendance to underserved schools are outlined. These factors are connected to Trey’s special needs like trauma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and learning difficulties/disabilities going undiagnosed and untreated within the context of the neurobiological immaturity of adolescence. The extent to which these factors converged to result in neuropsychological impairment is explored. This case analysis focuses attention on implications for research, policy and practice in preventing youth in underserved communities from entering the criminal and juvenile justice systems.     

Associations Between Lower Order Facets of Personality and Dimensions of Mental Disorder

Although there is a plethora of research documenting the relations between broad personality traits and psychopathology, there is decidedly less on the relations between lower order facets and psychopathology. In the current study, we explored the associations between lower order personality traits and dimensions of mental disorder. A combined sample of undergraduates and outpatients completed self-reports of personality and mental disorder. Symptom counts of mental disorders were factor analyzed, and a higher order three-factor solution emerged. One factor was substance use disorder (SUD), and internalizing branched into distress and fear. These dimensions were regressed on facets from the Big Five model of personality. SUD was significantly predicted by high excitement-seeking from the extraversion domain and low self-discipline from conscientiousness. Distress and fear were indistinguishable from one another but showed a different pattern of relations from SUD. High anxiety and depression from neuroticism, low gregariousness from extraversion, high aesthetics and low actions from openness, low trust and high tender-mindedness from agreeableness, and low self-discipline from conscientiousness significantly predicted distress and fear. The findings demonstrate that lower order traits within a single domain have complex relations with psychopathology, which are shrouded when examining broad, higher order traits. Assessment and treatment implications are discussed.     

The Clemson Juvenile Delinquency Project: Major Findings from a Multi-Agency Study

Clemson University researchers have conducted a multi-agency, multi-cohort study on juvenile offending and recidivism. Important features of the study are a sample size of approximately 100,000 delinquents and 100,000 non-delinquents; the merging of data sets from a state department of juvenile justice with those of departments of mental health, social services, education, and (adult) law enforcement; and statistical analyses focusing on the role of age, race, gender, child maltreatment, mental health disorders and school-related disabilities on juvenile referrals, prosecutions, re-offending and incarceration. Published findings strongly support earlier empirical and clinical work on influences on juvenile delinquency. The present article emphasizes our findings related to five important issues: the impact of prosecution on repeat offending, the effects of the juvenile's race on solicitor recommendations, the significance of one-time juvenile offending, the empirical support for the concept of "resilience," and the magnitude of associations between childhood history and later criminal offending.     

Personality,Resilience, and Psychopathology: A Model for the Interaction between Slow and Fast Network Processes in the Context of Mental Health

Network theories have been put forward for psychopathology (in which mental disorders originate from causal relations between symptoms) and for personality (in which personality factors originate from coupled equilibria of cognitions, affect states, behaviours, and environments). Here, we connect these theoretical strands in an overarching personality–resilience–psychopathology model. In this model, factors in personality networks control the shape of the dynamical landscape in which symptom networks evolve; for example, the neuroticism item ‘I often feel blue’ measures a general tendency to experience negative affect, which is hypothesized to influence the threshold parameter of the symptom ‘depressed mood’ in the psychopathology network. Conversely, events at the level of the fast-evolving psychopathology network (e.g. a depressive episode) can influence the slow-evolving personality variables (e.g. by increasing feelings of worthlessness). We apply the theory to neuroticism and major depressive disorder. Through simulations, we show that the model can accommodate important phenomena, such as the strong relation between neuroticism and depression and individual differences in the change of neuroticism levels and development of depression over time. The results of the simulation are implemented in an online, interactive simulation tool. Implications for research into the relationship between personality and psychopathology are discussed. © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology     

Relationships Among Spirituality, Religious Practices, Personality Factors, and Health for Five Different Faith Traditions

To determine: (1) differences in spirituality, religiosity, personality, and health for different faith traditions; and (2) the relative degree to which demographic, spiritual, religious, and personality variables simultaneously predict health outcomes for different faith traditions. Cross-sectional analysis of 160 individuals from five different faith traditions including Buddhists (40), Catholics (41), Jews (22), Muslims (26), and Protestants (31). Brief multidimensional measure of religiousness/spirituality (BMMRS; Fetzer in Multidimensional measurement of religiousness/spirituality for use in health research, Fetzer Institute, Kalamazoo, 1999); NEO-five factor inventory (NEO-FFI; in Revised NEO personality inventory (NEO PI-R) and the NEO-five factor inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual, Psychological Assessment Resources, Odessa, Costa and McCrae 1992); Medical outcomes scale-short form (SF-36; in SF-36 physical and mental health summary scores: A user??s manual, The Health Institute, New England Medical Center, Boston, Ware et al. 1994). (1) ANOVAs indicated that there were no significant group differences in health status, but that there were group differences in spirituality and religiosity. (2) Pearson??s correlations for the entire sample indicated that better mental health is significantly related to increased spirituality, increased positive personality traits (i.e., extraversion) and decreased personality traits (i.e., neuroticism and conscientiousness). In addition, spirituality is positively correlated with positive personality traits (i.e., extraversion) and negatively with negative personality traits (i.e., neuroticism). (3) Hierarchical regressions indicated that personality predicted a greater proportion of unique variance in health outcomes than spiritual variables. Different faith traditions have similar health status, but differ in terms of spiritual, religious, and personality factors. For all faith traditions, the presence of positive and absence of negative personality traits are primary predictors of positive health (and primarily mental health). Spiritual variables, other than forgiveness, add little to the prediction of unique variance in physical or mental health after considering personality. Spirituality can be conceptualized as a characterological aspect of personality or a distinct construct, but spiritual interventions should continue to be used in clinical practice and investigated in health research.     

Do Mental Health Services Influence Child Welfare Involvement among Juvenile Justice System Involved Youth

Journal of Child and Family Studies - There is limited understanding of mental health service utilization among youth in the juvenile justice system (JJS). Using administrative data, the current...     

Personality,psychopathology, and aging

The interplay of personality and psychopathology has been of substantial interest since the beginning of medicine and continues to be a clinically significant yet highly challenging focus of investigation. There is considerable empirical support for the important contributions that personality traits provide to the development of and resilience to psychopathology within mixed-age populations. However, the relationship of personality to mental health and psychopathology within the aging population is only just beginning to be studied. The purpose of this paper is to stimulate and to hopefully further the development of informative research on the interaction of personality and psychopathology within the aging community.     

Relationships of borderline features to parental mental illness, childhood abuse, Axis I disorder, and current functioning

Although a number of studies have investigated single, putative etiological factors for borderline personality disorder (BPD), few studies have assessed the relations between multiple etiological factors and borderline features within the same study. Borderline features, parental psychopathology, childhood physical and sexual abuse, lifetime Axis I disorder, and current functioning were assessed in 65 nonclinical participants, a portion of which exhibited significant BPD features. Multivariate models were tested and results indicated that parental mental illness and lifetime Axis I disorder were significant and unique predictors of borderline scores. Borderline features accounted for significant variance in current functioning beyond what was accounted for by other predictors; borderline scores mediated the relations between lifetime Axis I disorder and current functioning.     

All Parents Are to Blame (Except This One): Global Versus Specific Attitudes Related to Parental Responsibility Laws1

Increasing state legislation and media interest give the appearance of public support for parental responsibility laws; however, some national polls suggest otherwise. Based on disparate global and specific attitudes in other areas of the criminal justice literature, it was hypothesized that relatively weak global support for parental responsibility would be diminished even more if a specific juvenile was described. The current studies confirmed that participants were even less supportive of parental responsibility laws when a specific juvenile and his parents were described than they were when they answered questions about parents in general.     

Caution or Warning? A Validity Study of the MAYSI‐2 with Juvenile Offenders

Given the high prevalence of mental health and substance use disorders in the juvenile justice system and the emphasis on efficient screening and referrals, the current study sought to further validate the use of the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument version 2 (MAYSI‐2). Using data from institutionalized delinquents (N = 836) committed to the California Youth Authority, finite mixture modeling was employed to identify distinct latent classes based on MAYSI‐2 scale scores. Identified classes were then compared across a range of covariates, including prior offenses, official records of misconduct, and multiple measures of mental health and psychological well‐being. Findings revealed a three‐class, gradient‐based structure: low distress (n = 380), moderate distress (n = 327), and high distress (n = 129). Overall, the MAYSI‐2 identified juvenile offenders with mental health and substance use issues, but it did not differentiate youths with respect to offending patterns. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.