J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
August 2024
In her presidential initiative, AACAP President Dr. Tami Benton outlined her vision for the dynamic role of child and adolescent psychiatrists and their respective communities, encouraging them to transcend traditional clinical roles and become public health advocates by "Bringing the Village to the Children." This message emphasizes the capacity of child and adolescent psychiatrists to reach beyond clinical silos and identify partnerships across a variety of disciplines to improve child mental health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChild Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am
July 2024
Child and adolescent psychiatrists (CAPs) play a crucial role beyond the provision of clinical care. CAPs are uniquely placed to understand and help patients navigate the fine line among psychiatric care, health and well-being, and the laws and policies supporting or impairing these processes. Focusing on vulnerable populations, such as legal system impacted youth and families, CAPs can contribute to the ongoing development of a more just and equitable world for the children of today and of tomorrow.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
May 2024
Objective: Racial disparities in diagnosis and treatment are prevalent in child psychiatry, including disparate diagnosis rates of internalizing and externalizing disorders in Black and White children. However, limited research has investigated mechanisms that contribute to these disparities. This study examined child racial implicit associations in psychiatric clinicians and medical students to address this gap.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPoor sleep during adolescence is a public health concern that may be especially important to address among youth in juvenile correctional facilities, who tend to experience greater mental health challenges, substance use disorders, and traumatic stress exposure. However, evidence for addressing sleep in correctional settings is limited. Using de-identified composite clinical cases, this paper describes challenges and opportunities for addressing sleep disorders (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDialectical behavior therapy (DBT) has shown preliminary success in the treatment of youth in forensic settings. However, the implementation of DBT varies considerably from facility to facility. A scoping review was conducted to detail DBT intervention protocols in juvenile correctional and detention facilities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
November 2023
Antiracism can be defined as the practice of opposing racism and promoting racial equity and justice. Within health care, antiracism also includes acknowledging and addressing the structural injustices resulting in health inequities. Racism plays a role in how the United States accepts and welcomes refugees and asylum seekers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Incarcerated youth commonly present with emotion dysregulation, aggression, and comorbid psychiatric disorders, yet often do not receive necessary mental health treatment while confined. It is therefore crucial to expand the evidence base regarding empirically supported mental health interventions which are feasible to implement in secure settings to address incarcerated youth's mental health needs. Through a community-academic partnership, the current pilot study evaluated a comprehensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy program implemented in a juvenile correctional treatment center.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChild Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am
October 2022
Clinicians trained to assess and treat child psychopathology are facing an increasing need to expand their clinical expertise outside of traditional frameworks, which have historically focused largely on the child or the child-mother dyad. Clinicians treating children also need to be prepared to assess and address the systems of care that affect a child's mental health, starting with their family. There is a scarcity of Latino mental health providers and limited clinical opportunities or settings that serve this population by incorporating a developmental, cultural, and sociopolitical framework into high quality care of the whole family.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChild Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am
July 2022
Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances. CPGs have evolved during the last 2 decades from general consensus statements by prominent practitioners in the field to highly structured instruments. The Institute of Medicine has laid out specific standards for selecting the experts who develop a CPG and the process by which CPGs are developed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
October 2022
Objective: Implicit biases within school systems contribute to racist school cultures and policies. Black and Hispanic students are more likely to be over-policed in schools and to be penalized, especially by White teachers. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills can be taught to educators to support antiracist efforts in schools.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSupporting the mental health of youth who identify as Black, Indigenous, or Persons of Color (BIPOC) continues to be a challenge for clinicians and policymakers alike. Children and adolescents are a vulnerable population, and for BIPOC youth, these vulnerabilities are magnified by the effects of structural, interpersonal, and internalized racism. Integration of psychiatric care into other medical settings has emerged as an evidence-based method to improve access to psychiatric care, but to bridge the gap experienced by BIPOC youth, care must extend beyond medical settings to other child-focused sectors, including local governments, education, child welfare, juvenile legal systems, and beyond.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
April 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic abruptly upended American children's lives as schools, libraries, daycare centers, and parks closed to prevent further viral spread. The effects of the pandemic were not distributed equally. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demonstrated COVID-19's disproportionate impact on Black communities in terms of both infection rates and mortality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCOVID-19 has had disproportionate contagion and fatality in Black, Latino, and Native American communities and among the poor in the United States. Toxic stress resulting from racial and social inequities have been magnified during the pandemic, with implications for poor physical and mental health and socioeconomic outcomes. It is imperative that our country focus and invest in addressing health inequities and work across sectors to build self-efficacy and long-term capacity within communities and systems of care serving the most disenfranchised, now and in the aftermath of the COVID-19 epidemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDecades of research have focused on understanding and addressing racial disparities that occur at every stage of processing in the juvenile justice system. Leaders in the field have raised concerns about the differential treatment and selection of youth based on race. Taking into consideration Sussman and colleagues' results regarding the use of manifest injustice in Washington State, we review briefly the legislative changes that have occurred nationally to address the problem of disproportionate minority contact.
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