A recent report conducted by JAMA Psychiatry indicates that juvenile offenders appear to have higher risks of developing psychiatric disorders after being released from their detention centres.
Psychiatric disorders are prevalent among juvenile detainees. However, far less is known about the young people after they leave detention.
Karen M. Abram, Ph.D., of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and co-authors looked at patterns of comorbidity (the presence of 2 or more disorders), how they change and develop over time and what the odds are that a young person with a disorder at detention will have the same disorder three and five years in the future.
The authors used data from a group of almost 2000 young people from a variety of ethnicities and races. They followed up their report 2 years after the initial one and then 4 years later.
Many Psychiatric Disorders First Appear in Childhood and Adolescence
Results show that around 5 years after detention, when the average age of the young people in the study was 20 years, nearly 30% of males and 14% of females had 2 or more psychiatric disorders.
In males, the most common psychiatric disorder profile was substance use plus behaviour disorders, which affected 1 in 6 males.
Among young people who had 3 or more psychiatric disorders at baseline, almost all the males and 75% of the females had one or more disorders five years later.
“Many psychiatric disorders first appear in childhood and adolescence. Early-onset psychiatric disorders are among the illnesses ranked highest in the World Health Organization’s estimates of the global burden of disease, creating annual costs of $247 billion.” The researchers noted.
“Only a concerted effort to address the many needs of delinquent youth will help them thrive in adulthood.” they concluded.
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