Problem-specific racial/ethnic disparities in pathways from maltreatment exposure to specialty mental health service use for youth in child welfare. | LitMetric
The authors examined racial/ethnic differences in pathways from maltreatment exposure to specialty mental health service use for youth in contact with the Child Welfare system. Participants included 1,600 non-Hispanic White, African American, and Latino youth (age 4-14) who were the subjects of investigations for alleged maltreatment and participated in the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. Maltreatment exposure, internalizing, and externalizing problems were assessed at baseline and subsequent specialty mental health service use was assessed 1 year later. Maltreatment exposure predicted both internalizing and externalizing problems across all racial/ethnic groups, but non-Hispanic White youth were the only group for whom maltreatment exposure was linked with subsequent service use via both internalizing and externalizing problem severity. Only externalizing problems predicted subsequent service use for African American youth and this association was significantly stronger relative to non-Hispanic White youth. Neither problem type predicted service use for Latinos. Future research is needed to understand how individual-, family-, and system-level factors contribute to racial/ethnic differences in pathways linking maltreatment exposure to services via internalizing/externalizing problems.
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) are among the most common neurodevelopmental disabilities. Individuals with FASD experience postnatal adversity (PA; i.e.
Objective: Children and adolescents exposed to maltreatment are at a greater risk for substance use disorders in adulthood. However, developmental processes that explain how maltreatment experiences may influence substance use behaviors remain unclear. We investigated whether delay discounting (ie, the preference for immediate over delayed rewards), a critical indicator of self-regulation, serves as a key mechanism linking maltreatment and substance use.
Adolescence is a crucial period marked by profound changes in the brain. Exposure to psychological stressors such as bullying, abuse or maltreatment during this developmental period may increase the risk of developing depression, anxiety and comorbid cardiometabolic conditions. Chronic psychological stress is associated with behavioral changes and disruption of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, leading to corticosterone overproduction in rodents and changes in both the immune system and the gut microbiome.
Importance: Child abuse is a leading cause of morbidity in early childhood. Accurate detection remains challenging.
Objective: To describe racial and ethnic disproportionalities in suspicion for child abuse (SCA) in pediatric patients admitted after traumatic injury.
