Psychiatric Symptoms, Substance Use, Trauma, and Sexual Risk: A Brief Report of Gender Differences in Marijuana-Using Juvenile Offenders

Given the continued increases in proportion of young girls entering the juvenile justice system, identifying factors to incorporate into gender-responsive programming for these youths is of paramount importance to improving their behavioral health and legal outcomes. Psychiatric factors, including sexual abuse, marijuana use, and HIV/sexually transmitted infection (STI) sexual risk behaviors have been studied, but among detained youths. With increased emphasis on diverting young girls from incarceration, informing prevention and intervention programs about girls' psychiatric symptom profiles and co-occurring risk behavior while in the community but court-involved is of timely relevance. Therefore, preliminary associations, by gender, among psychiatric symptoms, history of sexual abuse, substance use, and HIV/STI sexual risk behavior among a pilot sample (N = 60) of court-involved, non-incarcerated (CINI) youths were explored. Results from chi-square and t-test analysis indicate important gender differences. Girls have higher rates of depression and trauma symptoms, and report higher rates of sexual abuse and sexual risk behavior. These results provide some initial data related to risk factors for community-supervised samples that can be used to begin to inform gender-specific juvenile justice programming.