Expert versus Youth Raters on Measuring Social and Therapeutic Climate in Secure Juvenile Placement.

Growing concern about the use of incarceration is driving significant reform in juvenile legal system decision-making and is likely to have a substantial impact on the role residential options play in the future continuum of care. It appears inevitable that surviving institutions or alternative residential models will be increasingly scrutinized for their impact on youth development. While rehabilitative models focused on youth development are a promising and growing part of residential institutions, few tools are available to measure quality.

Use of Manifest Injustice in the Washington State Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration.

In the Washington State Juvenile Code, the Manifest Injustice (MI) provision allows judges to sentence youth outside of the standard guidelines. We compared rates of Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration (JRA) involvement and MI between racial minority youth and Caucasian youth. Although not statistically significant, there was a trend toward African American and multiracial youth having MI used to decrease their sentence less frequently than Caucasian youth.

The Impact of Psychiatric Practice Guidelines on Medication Costs and Youth Aggression in a Juvenile Justice Residential Treatment Program.

Objective: Stakeholders have expressed concern over the appropriate use of psychiatric medications and adequacy of mental health services for youths involved with the juvenile justice system. This study assessed the impact of implementing psychiatric practice guidelines on medication costs and youth aggression in a juvenile justice facility. The study examined whether implementing psychiatric practice guidelines in a facility with an organized psychosocial treatment program would reduce psychiatric medication costs, compared with two other facilities, and whether lower psychotropic medication costs would be associated with increases in youth aggression.

Child welfare training in child psychiatry residency: a program director survey.

Objective: This study surveys child psychiatry residency program directors in order to 1) characterize child welfare training experiences for child psychiatry residents; 2) evaluate factors associated with the likelihood of program directors' endorsing the adequacy of their child welfare training; and 3) assess program directors' familiarity with some existing child welfare training and information resources.

Method: Program directors of American College of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-accredited child psychiatry residency programs were surveyed anonymously. Participants characterized their program's child welfare training curriculum and indicated their awareness of selected child welfare information and training resources.

Demographic and clinical characteristics of adolescents in Hawaii with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Background: A high prevalence rate of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) among Hawaiian adolescents, particularly Native Hawaiians, has been reported. Because Native Hawaiian and other Polynesian youth are at an increased risk for rheumatic fever, caused by an autoimmune response to group A beta-hemolytic streptococci, we hypothesized that the genetic and environmental risk factors for streptococcal infections and their autoimmune sequelae potentially may be associated with the presence of OCD and may partially explain this high OCD prevalence.

Objective: To describe, among the adolescents in Hawaii diagnosed as having OCD through a previous study, OCD prevalence by ethnicity, household crowding and other measures of socioeconomic status, various measures of physical health and health-seeking behavior, and comorbid psychopathologic features.