Connections between Homeless Youth, Gangs, and Mental Health: A Secondary Data Analysis

Background: In 2022 the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention published their funding from 2017 to 2019 has doubled from $3.5 million to $7.4 million to identify and address gang activity. Gang violence is a public health that requires cross sector attention to allow best approaches in supporting youth who become involved in gangs. There is scant research on youth experiencing housing insecurity and gang involvement/affiliation although many times the two correlate. Wood et al., in 2017 mentioned that knowledge on individuals who affiliate with gangs versus those who are currently in gangs is very limited. As individuals identify with being affiliated or currently in a gang, often these young people are excluded from services even though they often have complex unmet mental health needs. Past research shows that youth gang affiliation is positively associated to alcohol and drug use as well as challenging behaviors and negatively associated to coping skills.

Methods: This study is a secondary data analysis from data that was originally collected by the Homeless Youth Risk and Resilience Survey (HYRRS). The survey was created by a team of researchers across seven major cities that include: Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Phoenix, San Jose, and St. Louis. A uniform survey instrument was used to throughout the recruitment of roughly 200 young adults per city through drop in centers, shelters, and transitional housing programs. All participants were between the age of 18-26 and experienced some type of housing insecurity. For this study, we will be exploring data from 278 participants who reported past or present membership in a gang.

Results: Of the 278 participants, majority reported as male (80%) and either Black/AA (42%), Latino (18%), or multi-racial (20%). 49.3% reported they are currently active members of a gang, while 50.4% reported past membership in a gang. PHQ9 scores indicated that former members had higher rates of moderate to severe depression (60%) than current members (46%). Former members also had higher rates of suicidal thoughts (36%) and suicidal attempts (23%) than current members (27%, 16% respectively). When asked from whom they would seek help, "intimate partner" was selected the most by both former (33%) and current (28%) members and a "phone helpline" was selected the least (8%, 11% respectively).

Conclusion and Implication: Both former and current gang members have alarmingly high rates of depression, suicidal ideation, and suicidal attempts. Differences between the groups show that former members of gangs had higher rates of all three mental health indicators. In addition, the help seeking data showed both groups prefer to seek help from intimate partners over helplines. These results show that further research on these differences is crucial to understand how to address mental health for this population. Policies and practices around providing mental health support to individuals who affiliate or are involved with gangs should reflect research and input from this community. In addition, the opportunity to democratize knowledge to those who individuals seek help from can be instrumental in addressing challenges these individuals face.