Friends of the Forensic Sciences Club, this week we present the paper “Characterizing trajectories of anxiety, depression, and criminal offending in male adolescents over the 5 year following their first arrest”, by Baker, A. E.; Padgaonkar, N. T.; Galván, A.; Frick, P. J.; Steinberg, L. and Cauffman, E. (2022), in which authors carry out a study to know how anxiety, depression and other factors related to mental health affect young offenders’ lives, starting from their first arrest.

The possibility of entering prison and being tried for a crime is not pleasant for anyone. Therefore, it is not surprising that youth who are in contact with the justice system experience higher levels of internalizing symptoms such as anxiety and depression, compared to youth who do not offend.

The rates of anxiety and depression in this population are especially worrying. Almost half of the young people involved in justice meet clinical criteria for internalizing psychological problems.

And about half of adult men in the same situation experience mental health disorders while serving time, and even once they are free.

In addition, mental health problems go hand in hand with criminological problems: people who continue offending after adolescence are almost three times more likely to experience health problems.

Another important fact is that young people in the justice system rarely receive treatment, which is related to an increased risk of substance abuse, academic failure and emotional disorders that will last into adulthood, including an increased risk of suicide.

It is a very important topic and needs to be addressed, because most psychiatric disorders appear during adolescence or early adulthood, a period in which risky behaviors also reach their peak.

But what does the existing literature say about it? The results of a 2019 study suggest a temporal cascade in which behavioral problems in childhood translate into negative social outcomes, contributing to depression in adolescence, which in turn may contribute to adolescent or adult delinquency later.

In a sample that was followed for six years until 2012, youth showing high levels of depression were at risk of increasing their disruptive behavior, and youth showing high levels of disruptive behavior were at risk of developing much higher depression symptoms.

What this work proposes is to find out if the trajectory of the symptoms and the offensive trajectory change with the entry of young people into the justice system and how they do so.

First, the authors wanted to characterize the average trajectory of the internalization of criminal symptoms and behaviors of young people after their first contact with the justice system. Given that the prevalence of mental health disorders tends to increase after first contact with the justice system, authors hypothesized that the group would show a progressive increase in them.

In addition, due to the increase of criminal behavior during adolescence and young adulthood, the continuation of delinquency into adulthood was also hypothesized.

The second objective was to examine whether the change in mental health is related to the change in delinquency, or vice versa, and to describe this relationship if it exists.

For all of this, 1,216 male adolescents were evaluated during the five years that followed their first arrest. These arrests were made for minor, medium-range crimes, such as thefts, simple assaults, or vandalism. They were evaluated every six months for the first three years, after which the interviews were given annually.

The results of the study indicated that anxiety and depression change along with criminal behaviors in male adolescents after their first arrest, so the greater improvement in mental health, the higher level of decrease in delinquency, and vice versa. These findings highlight the intertwined nature of internalizing symptoms and externalizing behaviors, and underscore the importance of considering mental health in studies of juvenile recidivism.

When the youth met the justice system, an initial decrease in anxiety and depression was seen, followed by an increase in symptoms a few years later.

The latter suggests that involvement in the justice system influences the trajectory of symptoms and worsens them as youth develop.

In addition, when young people had grown up in poor and problematic neighborhoods, they presented a greater severity in the anxiety and depression suffered, which is in line with previous studies that highlight that the disorganization of the neighborhood and exposure to violence can increase the risk of mental health problems in adolescents.

Despite the usefulness of this study, one limitation is that it was carried out only with young men, so perhaps the results cannot be applied to the female sex, therefore, authors recommend exploring this dimension.

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