Implications For Mental Health Intervention

I will be discussing the article “Study of delinquent, diverted, and high-risk adolescent girls: Implications for mental health intervention”. I will start by giving a brief summary of the article I have chosen. Followed by discussing the type of article this is and my conclusion I have drawn form the information found in this article.

Lastly I will discuss how this article fits into our sociology class as well as how this article differs from non-scholarly periodicals The article begins by describing the issue of increasing numbers of adolescent girls being entered into our nation’s juvenile judicial system. The study aims to assess the most common risk factors that are affecting adolescent girls being entered into the juvenile judicial system. It also aims to find the effectiveness of the prevention factors in place to keep adolescents out of the system.

For the study a survey was administered over the course of nine months to a hundred and fifty-nine adolescent girls. These adolescent girls were broken into three categories delinquent, diverted and high-risk. Delinquent girls are the girls that have been entered in the juvenile justice system in some form ranging from home care to a penitentiary. The diverted girls group consists of girls that have engaged in behaviors that have brought them to the attention of the juvenile justice system but instead of being entered into the judicial system were referred to some form of community-based services.

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Lastly is the high-risk group which are girls are receiving services in programs as a result of problems or behaviors that have them at risk of involvement with the juvenile justice system. The risk factors assessed included delinquent behavior, experiences of discrimination, negative life events, child trauma such as abuse or neglect, depression and suicide attempts just to name a few. Some of the protective factors assessed included mental health services used, positive school experiences, positive peer involvement and rational coping behaviors.

The results from the surveys provided the information that on average the girls in all program types reported mild to moderate levels of depression, but girls in closed residential juvenile justice placement were significantly more depressed than girls involved in the home-based programs. Another surprising result was that nearly one third of the total sample had reported that they have considered suicide. In almost every scenario girls in closed residential juvenile justice placement experienced higher numbers in child trauma, negative age and peer relations, delinquent behavior etc. he only factor that all the girls represented similar experiences were in the form of discrimination. All girls reported some form of discrimination but no one group reported increased amounts. This article is a combination of previous research and new data because though this research added the element of high risk adolescents there has been previous research done dealing with delinquents and diverted adolescents.

I also like the article stated find the research to be incomplete in that no true definitive conclusions can be drawn from the limited samples taken solely in this study. From this article I believe that there should be more focus on understanding the risk factors that contribute to delinquency in adolescents. I also believe there should be more preventive programs in place to help promote proper mental health for our adolescents which I believe will lead to less adolescents in our juvenile judicial system.

Though we may not be able to stop the predisposed risk factors such as impoverished conditions, having unstable family systems, living in multiple out-of-home placements we can change the programs in place to better support adolescents in these situations. I believe this article enforces the concepts we have learned in chapter five on socialization. This article proves how much early childhood experiences and the family element play a role in development of adolescents. I believe more research in the mental development of underprivileged adolescents needs to be done.

I am a firm believer that there are not enough programs in place to aid underprivileged children in this country and that we take too much of a one size fits all approach in development of our adolescents. Research like this proves there are mental development differences dependent on your upbringing and early family element and more work needs to be done to aid these adolescents. From my experience I generally find the material in scholarly periodicals has more reliable information than non-scholarly periodicals.

I find that the scholarly periodicals are usually written by or reported by the people actually performing the research. Non-scholarly periodicals are generally written for the general public and usually are a summary of information found elsewhere. I find both scholarly and non-scholarly periodicals to be very similar in many aspects simply because the main goal is to get the information out. This being said it not uncommon to find flashy titles or distinguishing fonts to help draw and audience.

I believe this paper provides a clear explanation of the concepts expressed in the article as they pertain to adolescent girls involved in the juvenile judicial system. From the results of the study I believe that it is clear that this is a rising issue and without a push to better the situation it will only get worse.

Work Cited:

1. Ruffolo, Mary C. , Sarri, Rosemary. , Goodkind, Sara.. "Study of delinquent, diverted, and high-risk adolescent girls: Implications for mental health intervention. " Social Work Research 4(2004):237. eLibrary. Web. 29 Jul. 2012.

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