Overview Substance use and substance use disorders are highly prevalent among youth under juvenile justice (JJ) supervision, and related to delinquency, psychopathology, social problems, risky sex and sexually transmitted infections, and health problems. However, numerous gaps exist in the identification of behavioral health (BH) problems and in the subsequent referral, initiation and retention in treatment for youth in community justice settings. This reflects both organizational and systems factors, including coordination between justice and BH agencies. Methods and Results This paper presents a new framework, the Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health Services Cascade (“Cascade”), for measuring unmet substance use treatment needs to illustrate how the cascade approach can be useful in understanding service delivery issues and identifying strategies to improve treatment engagement and outcomes for youth under community JJ supervision. We discuss the organizational and systems barriers for linking delinquent youth to BH services, and explain how the Cascade can help understand and address these barriers. We provide a detailed description of the sequential steps and measures of the Cascade, and then offer an example of its application from the Juvenile Justice – Translational Research on Interventions for Adolescents in the Legal System project (JJ-TRIALS), a multi-site research cooperative funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Conclusion As illustrated with substance abuse treatment, the Cascade has potential for informing and guiding efforts to improve behavioral health service linkages for adolescent offenders, developing and testing interventions and policies to improve interagency and cross-systems coordination, and informing the development of measures and interventions for improving the implementation of treatment in complex multisystem service settings.

The prevalence of psychiatric disorders among incarcerated juveniles in Mississippi was examined. A total of 482 adolescents completed a diagnostic questionnaire and a subset (N = 317) was assessed with face-to-face semi-structured interview. Most of the study participants met criteria for one mental disorder, 71-85% depending on assessment method, one-third have co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders. Gender and placement site differences in rates of some psychiatric disorders were also noted. Routine mental health screening should be performed on all juveniles placed in secure detention facilities to identify those who need treatment services.

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In the majority of cases, parents did not display abnormal levels of stress or coping on quantitative assessment. The semi-structured interview provided further information about the parents' level of coping and potential for stress and highlighted the need for more effective exchange of clinical information at a critical period of the parent-child relationship.

Canadian immigrants can be without health insurance for many reasons but limited data exists regarding uninsured health outcomes. Uninsured Canadian residents were identified in the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System for all visits to emergency departments in Ontario, Canada between 2002/3 and 2010/11 (N = 44,489,750). Frequencies for main diagnoses, severity (triage), and visit disposition were compared. Ambulatory care sensitive conditions were identified in a 10 % subsample. The uninsured (N = 140,730; 0.32 %) were more likely to be diagnosed with mental health (insured: 3.48 %; uninsured: 10.47 %) or obstetric problems (insured: 2.69 %; uninsured: 5.56 %), be triaged into the two most severe categories (insured: 11.2 %; uninsured 15.6 %), leave untreated (insured: 3.1 %; uninsured: 5.4 %), or die (insured: 2.8 %; uninsured: 3.7 %). More ACSC visits were made by uninsured children and youth. Insurance status is associated with more serious health status on arrival to emergency departments and more negative visit outcomes.