Racial and ethnic differences in the availability of community medical services after leaving prison.

Introduction: Incarcerated individuals experience increased health problems, presenting additional challenges as they leave prison and re-enter the community. These challenges are disproportionally experienced by racial and ethnic minorities. Despite these trends, little is known regarding the availability of medical services within the communities to which incarcerated individuals return.

The longitudinal associations between bullying perpetration, bullying victimization, and internalizing symptoms: Bidirectionality and mediation by friend support.

Internalizing symptoms have been linked to bullying perpetration and victimization in adolescence. However, the directions of any causal relationships remain unclear, and limited research has identified the mechanisms that explain the associations. Given the salience of peer relationships during the teenage years, we examine whether perceived support from friends is one such mechanism.

Consequences of Victimization on Perceived Friend Support during Adolescence.

Victimization can harm youth in various ways and negatively affect their friendships with peers. Nevertheless, not all victimized youth are impacted similarly, and the literature is unclear regarding why some victims are more likely than others to experience friendship-based consequences. Using five waves of data on 901 adolescents (6th grade at wave 1; 47% male; 88% White) and a subsample of 492 victimized youth, this study assessed (1) whether victimization leads to decreases in perceived friend support, and (2) the factors that explain which victimized youth are most likely to experience decreases in perceived friend support.

Youth with Co-occurring Delinquency and Depressive Symptoms: Do They Have Better or Worse Delinquent Outcomes?

Delinquent youth often experience depression, but depression's impact on their future deviance is unclear. Using survey and social network data on a panel of 9th graders (N = 8701; M at baseline = 15.6; 48% male; 85% white; 18% eligible for free or reduced-price school lunch) followed throughout high school, this study tested whether depressive symptoms predicted later deviance or deviant peer affiliations among already delinquent youth.

Social Ties Cut Both Ways: Self-Harm and Adolescent Peer Networks.

Peers play an important role in adolescence, a time when self-harm arises as a major health risk, but little is known about the social networks of adolescents who cut. Peer network positions can affect mental distress related to cutting or provide direct social motivations for self-harm. This study uses PROSPER survey data from U.

Adolescent Internalizing Symptoms and the "Tightknittedness" of Friendship Groups.

Adolescents with depression have lower peer status overall, but tend to befriend each other. We examined the "tightknittedness" of their friendship groups by testing whether adolescent friendship groups' average levels of or variability in internalizing symptoms predict group cohesiveness. We used four waves (9th-12th grades) of survey and social network data on 3,013 friendship groups from the PROmoting School-Community-University Partnerships to Enhance Resilience study.

Social Exclusion and Parental Incarceration Impacts on Adolescents' Networks and School Engagement.

Although prior research links parental incarceration to deleterious outcomes for children over the life-course, few studies have examined whether such incarceration affects the social exclusion of children during adolescence. Drawing on several lines of scholarship, we examine whether adolescents with incarcerated parents have fewer or lower quality relationships, participate in more antisocial peer networks, and feel less integrated or engaged in school. The study applies propensity score matching to survey and network data from a national sample of youth.

New Students' Peer Integration and Exposure to Deviant Peers: Spurious Effects of School Moves?

School moves during adolescence predict lower peer integration and higher exposure to delinquent peers. Yet mobility and peer problems have several common correlates, so differences in movers' and non-movers' social adjustment may be due to selection rather than to causal effects of school moves. Drawing on survey and social network data from a sample of 7th and 8th graders, this study compared the structure and behavioral content of new students' friendship networks to those of not only non-movers, but also of students about to move schools; the latter should resemble new students in both observed and unobserved ways.

Early Sexual Initiation and Mental Health: A Fleeting Association or Enduring Change?

The present research examined how the within-person association between sexual initiation and internalizing symptoms decays over time, using data with annual measurement occasions across adolescence (N = 1,789) and statistical models of within-person change. Sexual initiation was associated with increased levels of internalizing symptoms for early-initiating girls (ninth grade, approximately age 15), but not for on-time-initiating girls or for boys. The association between girls' early sexual initiation and internalizing symptoms declined precipitously over time.

Internalizing Symptoms, Peer Substance Use, and Substance Use Initiation.

This study used longitudinal survey and social network data covering sixth through ninth grades to test whether internalizing symptoms make early adolescents more prone to (1) exposure to and (2) influence by substance-using peers. Random effects regressions revealed that increases in symptoms were significantly associated with increases in the proportion of friends who used cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana; some associations weakened across grades. Event history models revealed that the effect of friends' smoking on smoking initiation decreased as internalizing symptoms increased; symptoms did not moderate the effects of friends' alcohol and marijuana use on alcohol and marijuana use initiation.

Risk Factors for Substance Misuse and Adolescents' Symptoms of Depression.

Purpose: Depressive symptoms during adolescence are positively associated with peer-related beliefs, perceptions, and experiences that are known risk factors for substance misuse. These same risk factors are targeted by many universal substance misuse prevention programs. This study examined whether a multicomponent universal substance misuse intervention for middle schoolers reduced the associations between depressive symptoms, these risk factors, and substance misuse.

EXPLAINING THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN INCARCERATION AND DIVORCE.

Recent studies have suggested that incarceration dramatically increases the odds of divorce, but we know little about the mechanisms that explain the association. This study uses prospective longitudinal data from a subset of married young adults in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 1,919) to examine whether incarceration is associated with divorce indirectly via low marital love, economic strain, relationship violence, and extramarital sex. The findings confirmed that incarcerations occurring during, but not before, a marriage were associated with an increased hazard of divorce.

PARTNERSHIP TRANSITIONS AND ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR IN YOUNG ADULTHOOD: A WITHIN-PERSON, MULTI-COHORT ANALYSIS.

Objectives: This study examines the effects of young adult transitions into marriage and cohabitation on criminal offending and substance use, and whether those effects changed since the 1970s as marriage rates declined and cohabitation rates rose dramatically. It also examines whether any beneficial effects of cohabitation depend on marriage intentions.

Methods: Using multi-cohort national panel data from Monitoring the Future ( = 15,875), the authors estimated fixed effects models relating within-person changes in marriage and cohabitation to changes in criminal offending and substance use.

Still the Favorite? Parents' Differential Treatment of Siblings Entering Young Adulthood.

This study examined within-family stability in parents' differential treatment of siblings from adolescence to young adulthood and the effect of differential treatment in young adulthood on grown siblings' relationship quality. The author used longitudinal data on parent - child and sibling relations from the sibling sample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health ( = 1,470 sibling dyads). Within-dyad fixed effects regression models revealed that the adolescent sibling who was closer to parents went on to be the young adult sibling who was closer to and received more material support from parents.

THE CODE OF THE STREET AND INMATE VIOLENCE: INVESTIGATING THE SALIENCE OF IMPORTED BELIEF SYSTEMS.

Scholars have long argued that inmate behaviors stem in part from cultural belief systems that they "import" with them into incarcerative settings. Even so, few empirical assessments have tested this argument directly. Drawing on theoretical accounts of one such set of beliefs-the code of the street-and on importation theory, we hypothesize that individuals who adhere more strongly to the street code will be more likely, once incarcerated, to engage in violent behavior and that this effect will be amplified by such incarceration experiences as disciplinary sanctions and gang involvement, as well as the lack of educational programming, religious programming, and family support.

Hanging Out with Which Friends? Friendship-Level Predictors of Unstructured and Unsupervised Socializing in Adolescence.

Companions are central to explanations of the risky nature of unstructured and unsupervised socializing, yet we know little about whom adolescents are with when hanging out. We examine predictors of how often friendship dyads hang out via multilevel analyses of longitudinal friendship-level data on over 5,000 middle schoolers. Adolescents hang out most with their most available friends and their most generally similar friends, not with their most at-risk or similarly at-risk friends.

Project ALERT with outside leaders: what leader characteristics are important for success?

A previously published effectiveness study of Project ALERT delivered in schools by outside providers from Cooperative Extension found no positive effects for the adult or teen-assisted delivery of the curriculum despite high-quality implementation. Those findings and the likelihood that more outside providers will deliver evidence-based drug prevention programs in the future, led to this investigation of possible influences of leaders' personal characteristics on ALERT's program effects. Influence of leader characteristics on students' drug use and mediating variables for use were assessed by modeling program effects on within-student change as a function of leader characteristics.

Treatment recommendations for the use of antipsychotics for aggressive youth (TRAAY). Part II.

Objective: To develop treatment recommendations for the use of antipsychotic medications for children and adolescents with serious psychiatric disorders and externalizing behavior problems.

Method: Using a combination of evidence- and consensus-based methodologies, recommendations were developed in six phases as informed by three primary sources of information: (1) current scientific evidence (published and unpublished), (2) the expressed needs for treatment-relevant information and guidance specified by clinicians in a series of focus groups, and (3) consensus of clinical and research experts derived from a formal survey and a consensus workshop.

Results: Fourteen treatment recommendations on the use of atypical antipsychotics for aggression in youth with comorbid psychiatric conditions were developed.

Antipsychotics for aggressive adolescents: barriers to best practice.

In adolescents, antipsychotics are most often used to treat complex, comorbid conditions with core disruptive features. However, the literature guiding such practices is limited. Best practice guidelines bridging the gap between the evidence and clinical practice have been developed to promote the appropriate and safe use of antipsychotics in aggressive youths.