The majority of research on the factors that impact juvenile mental illness is contextualized in terms of exposure to violence, peer victimization and socially disorganized or criminogenic neighborhoods. While gangs factor prominently in all of these contexts, gangs are rarely discussed as a possible catalyst for the adverse early life experiences (AELE) that lead to juvenile mental illness. This paper seeks to examine the relationship between gang behavior and juvenile mental illness. This study used archival data from a community-based gang intervention program in the Southern United States to conduct the exploratory analysis. The study found that exposure to criminogenic neighborhoods and school failure were significant predictors of mental illness among study participants. Interestingly, gang activity was not a significant predictor of mental illness when tested in a traditional multivariate model due to multi-collinearity with other test variables. When nodels were corrected and subjected to a step-wised regression technique, exposure to criminogenic neighborhoods and school failure maintained their statistically significant impacts on juvenile mental illness. The researchers summarize that gangs may impact juvenile mental illness by serving as a latent catalyst of mental illness in socially disorganized neighborhoods. Copyright © 2015, Journal of Gang Research
Language: en
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