The COVID-19 pandemic altered the college experience and substantially impacted emerging adults’ navigation of this life stage. This concurrent mixed-methods study used an online survey, distributed to a southeastern university shortly after the transition to remote learning, to explore and understand college-attending emerging adults’ experiences during COVID-19. A total of 1,220 students ( Mage = 20.9) participated, and the diversity of the demographics was largely consistent with the university population. Participants completed questionnaires about psychopathology and COVID-related stressors, and they were given an opportunity to provide feedback to the university about the adjustment to COVID-19. The most common stressors included loss of routine, lack of social contact, and work/finances. Approximately two-thirds of participants reported anxiety and depression symptoms in the moderate to severe range, and about one-third reported suicidality. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for the ongoing crisis and offer recommendations for universities and college counselors.

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Routine outcome monitoring (ROM) is the practice of using self-or other report measures to inform treatment by monitoring client symptoms and treatment progress while providing feedback to clinicians and clients. Although ROM has been found to improve therapeutic outcomes and reduce early termination and is considered an evidence-based practice, this essential process is underutilized by clinicians due to philosophical and practical implementation barriers. To improve clinician knowledge and utilization, there have been several recent calls for the study of ROM education and training practices. This paper describes a multiyear study of standardized ROM implementation in a psychology training clinic following a process model. We discuss features of the model and the implementation process including procedures, barriers, facilitators, and outcomes. While initially there were barriers to ROM implementation consistent with the literature, the use of an implementation framework along with evaluation (e.g., clinician feedback, client surveys) helped to address these barriers and improve ROM implementation, resulting in high utilization and compliance rates. The discussion highlights lessons learned and identified facilitators to help aid successful ROM implementation within a training setting.

Among drug classes, substance use disorder (SUD) consequent to using inhalants (SUD-I) has perhaps the smallest evidence base. This study compared SUD-IV vs. SUD-5 nomenclatures, testing whether four traditional categories of inhalants (aerosols, gases, nitrites, solvents) are manifestations of a single pathology, obtaining item parameters of SUD-I criteria, and presenting evidence that SUD can result from using nitrites. An urban, Midwestern, community sample of 162 inhalant users was recruited. Participants were 2/3 male, nearly 85% Caucasian, and had a mean age of 20.3 years (SD=2.4 years), spanning the ages of greatest incidence of SUD and slightly older than the primary ages of inhalants use initiation. Analyses consisted of bivariate associations, principle components analysis, and item response theory analysis. Validity was demonstrated for SUD-I consequent to each inhalant type as well as for aggregating all inhalant types into a single drug class. Results supported DSM-5 nomenclature over DSM-IV in multiple ways except that occurrence of diagnostic orphans was not statistically smaller using DSM-5.

One important subtyping of behavior problems is Moffitt’s (1993) “life-course-persistent” (LCP) and “adolescent limited” (AL) categories of antisocial behavior, which she differentiated in terms of high impulsivity, poor academic performance, and aggression. These problems may be exacerbated by the cumulative effects of chronic stress. Copious evidence has documented validity and developmental differences between these subtypes, whereas far fewer data exist regarding their clinical utility, in spite of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s nomenclature including corresponding subtypes based on age-of-onset of behavioral symptoms. The present study evaluated how well age-of-onset based subtyping identifies distinct developmental patterns of antisocial behavior corresponding to Moffitt’s subtypes in terms of risk factors and gender between LCP and AL in a prospective sample of chronically stressed youth. A computerized assessment tool (ALEXSA©) was used to obtain data from 1,147 youth aged 8–16. Implications for clinical assessment and intervention strategy, particularly with stressed youth, are discussed.