Association between risk and protective factors and mental health status of youth in the juvenile justice system.

摘要

The social development model specifies how risk and protective factors predict delinquency. This research sought to extend the social development model by using risk and protective factors to predict mental health status. The purposive sample included 145 valid scores from adjudicated youth (ages 12--18 years) from Multnomah, Polk, and Umatilla counties in Oregon. Data was collected by self-report and a survey completed by court counselors. Mental health status was measured by the MHI-5, a subset of the SF-36 (Ware, Kosinski, & Keller, I994), and the Internalizing subscale of the Youth Self-Report (YSR, Achenbach, 1991). Delinquency was measured by the Externalizing subscale of the YSR. Risk and protective factors were measured using items selected from the Student Survey of Risk and Protective Factors and Prevalence of Alcohol, Tobacco, and other Drug Survey (Catalano, Hawkins, & Pollard, 1997).;Five hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression analysis, t-tests, ANOVA, and the z-statistic. The five major findings of this study include, first, risk and protective factors were significantly predictive of delinquency. Second, only risk factors were significantly correlated to the YSR Internalizing t-scores of these youth. The combined effects of risk and protective factors were significantly predictive of YSR Internalizing t-scores, however, accounted for only 5% of the variance. Third, delinquency was found to be an intervening variable between risk and protective factors and YSR Internalizing t-scores. Fourth, there were no significant differences in mental health status between Whites and Youth of Color. And fifth, while there was a significant difference in mental health status between males and females, the linear regression model was only significant for the male-only sample.