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Symposia

Criminal Justice / Forensics

Addressing Mental Health Needs among Justice-Involved Youth: Risk, Intervention, and Systemic Barriers

1 - (SYM 63) Does Substance Use Moderate the Effectiveness of Date SMART for Juvenile Justice Involved Girls?

Sunday, November 23, 2025
2:04 PM - 2:18 PM CST
Location: Bolden 2, Level 2
Keywords: Legal Issues, Vulnerable Populations, Underserved Populations
Recommended Readings: Kemp, K., Sheerin, K., Pederson, C., Grant, M., Modrowski, C., & Spirito, A. (2025). Youth with Behavioral Health Symptoms in the Juvenile Legal System: From Assessment of Needs to Interventions to Scalability. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 21.,   Beaudry, G., Yu, R., Långström, N., & Fazel, S. (2021). An updated systematic review and meta-regression analysis: Mental disorders among adolescents in juvenile detention and correctional facilities. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 60(1), 46-60.,   Winters, G. M., Kaylor, L. E., & Jeglic, E. L. (2022). Toward a universal definition of child sexual grooming. Deviant Behavior, 43(8), 926-938.,   ,  
Abstract Body

This study investigates how adolescent substance use moderates the effectiveness of Date SMART, a cognitive-behavioral dating violence intervention, in reducing psychological and physical adolescent dating violence (ADV) among justice-involved girls.  The lack of attention on substance use within dating violence programming to date is particularly notable given the robust links between substance use and dating violence (Brem et al., 2022). It is likely that these health risk share etiological pathways (Livingston et al., 2018). It is also important to understand whether programs to primarily address either health risk, like Date SMART, can still be effective despite their common co-occurrence.

A randomized controlled trial was conducted with justice-involved adolescent girls (N = 240, ages 14-18) recruited from a Northeast U.S. family court system. Participants were randomly assigned to either the Date SMART intervention (a six-session, cognitive-behavioral program focusing on emotion regulation, relationship communication, and ADV prevention) or a knowledge-only (KO) control condition. Assessments were conducted at baseline, post-intervention, and at 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-month follow-ups. Psychological and physical ADV were assessed using the Conflict in Adolescent Dating Relationships Inventory (CADRI). Baseline substance use (alcohol and cannabis) was measured using the Timeline Followback (TLFB) interview, a validated self-report method for assessing past 30-day substance use. Multilevel modeling (MLM) was used to examine whether baseline substance use moderated intervention effects on ADV outcomes over time.  

These findings suggest that adolescent girls with higher levels of substance use may particularly benefit from skill-based interventions like Date SMART, potentially due to shared etiological pathways between substance use and dating violence. The findings also highlight the heterogeneous and dynamic risk of juvenile justice involved girls and underscores our need to respond to their differential needs rather than implement uniform intervention programming. Discussion will also address implications for interventions as well as limitations in the current study.