Every day, our jails and prisons take in large numbers of offenders who have serious mental health issues. But how good are we in diagnosing and treating their illnesses? Traditionally, not very good…and the record gets worse with respect to providing the most appropriate treatment. And as a recent study that I was part of published in the Journal of Youth & Adolescence showed, it is even more distressing when we examined diagnosis and treatment among racial/ethnic groups.
In this study of over 10,000 male and female offenders in long-term juvenile justice residential placements in Florida, we found that black males were 40 percent more likely — and black females 54 percent more likely — to be diagnosed with conduct disorder than whites. Conduct disorder is a repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior that violates the rights of others or society.
Even worse, black males were 32 percent less likely to receive psychiatric treatment than white males, with no differences between white and Hispanic males, or any female subgroups. That juvenile offenders were not being provided the treatment they need is troubling, but even more disheartening is that some types of kids have an even higher risk of not receiving the treatment they sorely needed. This is unacceptable.
[For more of this story, written by Alex R. Piquero, go to http://lufkindailynews.com/new...amp;utm_medium=email]
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