According to Chhabra (2017), the juvenile justice system is designed to curb youth crime by involving the police, courts, and correctional facilities. However, the justice system has also been given the responsibility of dealing with mental health issues of young offenders. The most prominent reason is that young people are usually under crucial development stages such as adolescence. As a consequence, they are likely to develop emotional imbalances, which when not dealt with, the young offenders are likely to reoffend. It was also disputed that some young people develop undesirable behaviors because of poor parenting skills. It, therefore, becomes necessary for juvenile facilities to come up with programs aimed at addressing young people’s mental health issues. This article discusses some of the programs, which include: cognitive-behavioral interventions, functional family therapy, and multidimensional treatment foster care.
Cognitive-behavioral interventions, as the name suggests, is designed to help change the conduct of young offenders. A significant number of young offenders develop aggressive behavior because they have a negative perception towards life. Such feelings may arise as a result of being abandoned or being bullied by both adults and peers. The program aims at guiding young people to develop a positive outlook on life, as well as to avoid violent reaction whenever they are provoked.
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The functional family therapy is mainly designed for children of ages 8 to 11 (Underwood & Washington, 2016). As it is evident, such children are so young to be subjected to punitive measures. The authorities are always almost convinced that parents play a big role in letting their children to engage in violent crimes. Therefore, the authorities engage both the children and their parents. Most of the time, this program is aimed at preventing young children who are risk of offending such as those from families involved in substance abuse and domestic violence.
Lastly, multidimensional treatment foster care involves placing children who have offended under the care of foster parents. These juvenile facilities are often known as foster homes (Underwood & Washington, 2016). This program seems to have been designed after the realization that placing young offenders in punitive facilities worsened their mental health. The foster parents are supposed to act like the youths’ parents, and make the facilities have a feel of a home. Such facilities help reduce mental distress and other mental issues among young offenders because they give the youths a sense of belonging.
References
Chhabra, D. K. (2017). Mental Health and the Juvenile Justice System: Where Has History Taken Us? American Journal of Psychiatry Residents' Journal , 12 (10), 2-3.
Underwood, L. A., & Washington, A. (2016). Mental illness and juvenile offenders. International journal of environmental research and public health , 13 (2), 228.
