The Center's research role is accomplished in the course of conducting program evaluation together with collaborating sites. At the request of a juvenile justice program, the Center consults to help implement evidence-based mental health practices; we then work with our collaborators to assure that new practices have clear impact on program outcomes, i.e., case identification, referrals, and disposition.

The Value of Research

Practical research is an essential component of dissemination and advocacy: documenting “what works” best in different settings is invaluable for improving practices. The Center's research agenda investigates the utility of incorporating scientifically sound psychiatric assessments, such as the Voice DISC, into ongoing practice for justice system youth. Each setting has unique concerns and characteristics. Together with collaborating agencies, we work to identify practical research questions unique to a site's geographic, population, or setting characteristics. The very real questions that interest justice sites are also of interest to the Center. Having a partnership to explore these questions allows us to help by creating reports that answer programmatic questions. The data and recommendations generated from such research collaborations moves the field forward.

Research Goals

Our goal is to conduct program evaluation studies to learn how best to incorporate mental health assessments into ongoing practice. The Center uses research methods to help juvenile justice programs learn how to improve mental health practices and to measure the results of those improvements.

We accomplish this goal by addressing questions such as:

What is the utility of incorporating scientifically sound psychiatric assessments into ongoing practice? And, how does it impact:
• Case identification rates
• Referral rates for mental health services
• Salience of mental health issues for decision-making

What setting characteristics are optimal for implementation of a systematic psychiatric assessment?
• Type of facility
• When is the best time in the justice process to assess youth?
• Which youth should be assessed?
• What other components are important?

Consultation

The Center typically helps a juvenile justice program evaluate the benefit of improving a component their of mental health service. Most frequently, a juvenile justice facility or agency approaches the Center with an interest in adopting the Voice DISC, or some other instrument, as a first step in their upgrading mental health screening and assessment. The Center consults with facility administration to determine the best manner of implementation, then trains the facility staff, provides ongoing technical support, and analyzes the impact of adding the new assessments to standard practice. A typical question might be whether using the Voice DISC results in more youth being correctly identified as needing mental health services, compared to standard procedures. The Center performs statistical analyses and provides reports to administrators in response to facility interests.

Other Center research projects are underway:

•Mental health service history is a critical and difficult to obtain component of a comprehensive mental health assessment. There has been no empirically-based screening tool to help juvenile justice staff systematically get this essential information from youth. In order to fill this gap in the field, the Center has developed a standardized screening tool to capture mental health service utilization history from youth. The Mental Health Service Use and Satisfaction Instrument for Youth (SUSI-Y) is a voiced, self-administered software screening instrument that is currently undergong validation.

•As a result of the need for a reliable method of identifying youth engaging in non-suicidal self-injury, we have recently developed the Voiced Index for Self-injurious Actions (VISA), a brief 20 minute automated voiced instrument, which assesses the nature, frequency, and intensity of specific self-injurious behaviors. We are pilotting the instrument, at the Youth Treatment and Rehabilitation Center in Geneva, Nebraska, a residential facility for females. The administration format is similar to the Voice DISC-IV, which has been successfully used with over 13,000 justice youth. We are hopeful that the perceived anonymity of a computerized interview will facilitate self-disclosure of this sensitive topic. Having a valid instrument for assessing self-injury will allow for documentation of this behavior among justice youth, will increase the chances that youth engaging in self-injurious behavior will receive treatment services, and will facilitate the ability of researchers to further study the nature of this behavior.

•Project Connect is CPMHJJ's latest undertaking. It is a suicide prevention project aimed at connecting juvenile probation officers in four New York counties with mental health providers in their areas. This project is funded by a grant from teh Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).