Strengths, Support, and Help-Seeking: Protective Factors for Behavioral Health and Delinquency Among Youth with SED

Background and Purpose: For youth with serious emotional disturbance (SED), prevention involves the reduction of impairment severity associated with SED and enhancement of youth capacity to function. Personal resources and supportive relationships have been identified as important categories of protective factors. These factors can potentially serve to mitigate the persistence of behavioral health and delinquency problems among SED youth already at greater risk of substance abuse disorders, juvenile justice system involvement, low school success, and other adverse outcomes.  The purpose of this study is to investigate the associations among youth strengths, supportive relationships, help-seeking behaviors, and youth problem symptoms and behavior among SED youth participating in a system of care.

 

Methods: This study is a preliminary investigation of baseline and 6-month data collected from 100 youth with SED who are at risk of placement or placement disruption.  The youth are participants in two systems of care projects in a mid-Atlantic state as part of the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program (CMHI) national longitudinal evaluation study.  Youth ranged in age from 10 to 21 ( x=15). Most youth were Black or African American (66%) and 58% were male. Baseline protective factors consisted of youth strengths, peer support, adult support, and help seeking behavior. Control variables included gender, race, and age. Six-month variables included depression, anxiety, substance use, and delinquency.  Descriptive and standard regression analyses were conducted using SAS 9.3.

Results: Regression analyses showed that youth strengths had a significant, negative relationship with total depression (p=.000) and negative self-evaluation (p=.003).  Strengths also had negative relationship with total anxiety, but this relationship only trended towards statistical significance (p=.081). Peer support had a significant, negative relationship with total depression (p = .010), negative self-evaluation (p=.010), and total anxiety (p=.018). Neither adult support nor help seeking was related to any of the internalized behavioral health problems.  Surprisingly, none of the protective factors were significantly related to substance use or delinquency among this population. However, the number of youth involved in delinquent acts (e.g., stealing, fights, carrying a weapon) was less than 11% of the sample.

Conclusions and Implications: Our preliminary results suggest youth strengths and peer support are important protective mechanisms for internalizing behavior problems among youth with SED, particularly depression. Prevention interventions can incorporate a reduction in symptoms associated with SED among this population along with an enhancement of protective processes. Promising targets for these interventions could include building youth strengths and encouraging positive relationships between youth and their peers.