Legal and ethical duties of health care professionals to incarcerated children

Psychiatric disorders of youth in detention

“…Mental health services. Youth in need of mental health services require access to them while in detention (Costello and Jameson, 1987;Wasserman et al, 2003). Detention centers should train personnel to detect mental disorders that are overlooked at intake or that arise during incarceration (Dembo et al, 1997;Hayes, 2000;Ulzen and Hamilton, 1998).…”

Psychiatric Disorders in Youth in Juvenile Detention

“…Like adult detainees, juvenile detainees with serious mental disorders have a constitutional right (under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments) to receive needed treatment. 5 Mental health professionals believe that providing psychiatric services to juvenile detainees could improve their quality of life and help reduce recidivism. [6][7][8] Until we have better data, we cannot know how best to use the system's scarce mental health resources.…”

Comorbid Psychiatric Disorders in Youth in Juvenile Detention

“…Detention centers are legally mandated to treat detainees with major mental disorders. 27 However, treating detainees who have ADM comorbidity is far more complex than treating youth who have only one disorder. 28,29 Sound epidemiologic data on comorbidity will help us target youth with the most common diagnostic profiles.…”