Psychiatric disorders of youth in detention

The juvenile justice system faces a significant challenge in identifying and responding to the psychiatric disorders of detained youth. In 2001, more than 104,000 juvenile offenders were in custody in juvenile residential placement facilities (Sickmund, Sladky, and Kang, 2004). Understanding the psychiatric disorders of juvenile detainees is an important step toward meeting their needs. Providing such youth with psychiatric services may be critical to breaking the cycle of recidivism. Without sound data on the prevalence of psychiatric disorders, however, defining the best strategies to use and allocating the juvenile justice system's scarce mental health resources are difficult.