Health Disparities in Drug- and Alcohol-Use Disorders: A 12-Year Longitudinal Study of Youths After Detention.

OBJECTIVES: To examine sex and racial/ethnic differences in the prevalence of 9 substance-use disorders (SUDs)--alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, hallucinogen or PCP, opiate, amphetamine, inhalant, sedative, and unspecified drug--in youths during the 12 years after detention. METHODS: We used data from the Northwestern Juvenile Project, a prospective longitudinal study of 1829 youths randomly sampled from detention in Chicago, Illinois, starting in 1995 and reinterviewed up to 9 times in the community or correctional facilities through 2011. Independent interviewers assessed SUDs with Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children 2.3 (baseline) and Diagnostic Interview Schedule version IV (follow-ups). RESULTS: By median age 28 years, 91.3% of males and 78.5% of females had ever had an SUD. At most follow-ups, males had greater odds of alcohol- and marijuana-use disorders. Drug-use disorders were most prevalent among non-Hispanic Whites, followed by Hispanics, then African Americans (e.g., compared with African Americans, non-Hispanic Whites had 32.1 times the odds of cocaine-use disorder [95% confidence interval = 13.8, 74.7]). CONCLUSIONS: After detention, SUDs differed markedly by sex, race/ethnicity, and substance abused, and, contrary to stereotypes, did not disproportionately affect African Americans. Services to treat substance abuse--during incarceration and after release--would reach many people in need, and address health disparities in a highly vulnerable population.

The Science, and Art, of Program Dissemination: Strategies, Successes, and Challenges.

The purpose of this special issue is to provide readers with a greater awareness of the processes involved in dissemination, as well as existing supports that help disseminate and sustain evidence-based interventions. Although dissemination research is limited in most disciplines, it is particularly lacking in the social science field. Many interventions aimed to help children and adolescents are found to be efficacious every year, but program developers are often not equipped to understand how to scale up a program or sustain it after the initial funding. Consumers (e.g., service providers, who are consumers of interventions), on the other hand, often do not understand all that goes into implementing and scaling up an intervention. This special issue will: (a) introduce readers to the problem; (b) discuss some of the challenges with disseminating programs; and (c) present various existing supports that can help scale up and sustain interventions.

Bringing The Incredible Years® Programs to Scale.

The Incredible Years(®) (IY) program series is a set of interlocking and comprehensive training programs for parents, teachers, and children. This article briefly reviews the theoretical foundations, goals, and research underlying these programs. The main purpose of the paper is to describe how the IY programs have been scaled up slowly and carefully with fidelity by engaging in a collaborative building project with strong links between the developer, agency or school administrator, mentors, coaches, clinicians, and families using eight foundational building blocks or fidelity tools.

Suicidal Ideation and Behavior in Youth in the Juvenile Justice System: A Review of the Literature.

Suicide is prevalent among youth, especially those involved in the juvenile justice system. Although many studies have examined suicidal ideation and behavior in delinquent youth, prevalence rates vary widely. This article reviews studies of suicidal ideation and behavior in youth in the juvenile justice system, focusing on the point of contact: incarceration status and stage of judicial processing. Suicidal ideation and behavior are prevalent and increase with greater involvement in the juvenile justice system. Depression, sexual abuse, and trauma were the most commonly identified predictors of suicidal ideation and behavior. Prevalence rates of suicidal ideation and behavior vary by gender and race/ethnicity, indicating the need for gender-specific and culturally relevant interventions.

Interparental conflict in kindergarten and adolescent adjustment: prospective investigation of emotional security as an explanatory mechanism.

Advancing the long-term prospective study of explanations for the effects of marital conflict on children's functioning, relations were examined between interparental conflict in kindergarten, children's emotional insecurity in the early school years, and subsequent adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems. Based on a community sample of 235 mothers, fathers, and children (Ms=6.00, 8.02, 12.62years), and multimethod and multireporter assessments, structural equation model tests provided support for emotional insecurity in early childhood as an intervening process related to adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems, even with stringent autoregressive controls over prior levels of functioning for both mediating and outcome variables. Discussion considers implications for understanding pathways between interparental conflict, emotional insecurity, and adjustment in childhood and adolescence.

Examining the Family Context and Relations with Attitudes to School and Scholastic Competence.

The importance of family relations in children's adjustment has been established, but questions remain about the contexts that account for these associations. Examining children's reactions to family stress holds promise for advancing our understanding of the relations between attachment and school-related outcomes. The present study examined children's attachment, basal cortisol, and emotional reactions in 235 community families, to understand contributions to children's attitudes to school and scholastic competence. Children's attachment security and normative basal cortisol both contributed to positive school outcomes, while insecurity in the context of low or high cortisol and emotional distress related negatively. Findings highlight the importance of examining stress in family contexts to advance the understanding of children's school functioning, with implications for school mental health interventions.