Citation

Gilbert AL, Grande TL, Hallman J, Underwood LA. J. Correct. Health Care 2014; 21(1): 35-44.

Affiliation

Regent University, School of Psychology and Counseling, Virginia Beach, VA, USA leeunde@regent.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, National Commission on Correctional Health Care (USA), Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1078345814557788

PMID

25431437

Abstract

The high prevalence of mental health disorders among incarcerated juveniles is a matter of national and global concern. Juvenile justice personnel need accurate screening measures that identify youth requiring immediate mental health services. The purpose of this study was threefold: (a) to examine the utility of the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument, Version 2 (MAYSI-2) in identifying juveniles with mental health concerns in a large sample of juveniles (N = 4,009), (b) to provide data regarding rates of identified mental health needs in incarcerated youth, and (c) to provide descriptive comparisons to other studies using the MAYSI-2. Mean scores of subscales were compared with the MAYSI-2 normative samples and other recent studies.

RESULTS indicated that this population has a high occurrence of mental health symptoms and there is high variability in the severity of the symptoms. In addition, a multivariate analysis of variance test found significant differences in mental health problems across ethnic groups.

Language: en