Racial matching and adolescent self-disclosure of substance use and mental health symptoms

Abstract

Obtaining accurate assessment data from adolescents in treatment aids clinical decision making and facilitates more accurate outcome evaluations. However, findings could be biased due to underreported substance use and mental health symptoms. This article compares self-reports of youth in non-White matched client–assessor dyads and those in nonmatched dyads. There were no differences on self-reported substance use, but matched youth reported significantly fewer attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms versus the comparison group. One possible reason for these findings is the effect of in-group stereotype threat. Future studies should examine the potential effect that in-group stereotyping and perceived racism have on the therapeutic relationship.

Racial/Ethnic Differences in Illicit Substance Use: A Temporal-Ordered Test of General Strain Theory

“…Targeted interventions that focus on illicit substance use or mental health, including strain and stress, must take note of their common comorbidity (Hussong et al, 2017;Siennick et al, 2017), and would likely be better served by addressing both as much as possible to capture this overlapping population. Adequate treatment for these comorbid conditions must acknowledge how pathways to substance use, when mental health symptoms are present, may differ according to race and ethnicity, and health care and health care education in dire need of culturally competent tailoring thusly (Arfken et al, 2012;Ureche et al, 2016). Our study further contributes to the literature by offering several opportunities for such tailoring of prevention and harm reduction strategies that are culturally sensitive to the specific stressful events young adults experience, potentially improving their chances of seeking and remaining in substance use treatment and/or reducing their future recidivism.…”

Bending toward justice in eyewitness identification research.

“…For example, in the health care field, non-White individuals may be unwilling to divulge health symptoms to White clinicians or health care workers (e.g., Mensch & Kandel, 1988). As another example, adolescents in treatment for substance abuse who were paired with a clinician whose race matched their own reported fewer symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder than did those whose clinician’s race differed from their own (their reports of substance use were unchanged, Ureche et al, 2016). Did the matched pairs produce more accurate representations of symptomatology?…”