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We investigated the interaction of mental health needs and race and ethnicity on juvenile justice placement decisions. Mental health diagnoses and placement decisions were collected for a large (n = 9765) sample of justice‐involved youth in the state of Texas from 2007 to 2008. Analyses revealed Black and Hispanic youth were overrepresented in secure facilities, although race and ethnicity were not predictive of disposition decisions beyond legal variables. Substance use interacted with race and ethnicity such that Black and Hispanic youth with substance use diagnoses were less likely than non‐Hispanic White youth to be placed in secure settings. Youth with internalizing or externalizing mental health diagnoses received similar placement decisions regardless of race or ethnicity. Findings are in contrast to prior investigations of the interaction of race/ethnicity and mental health needs on placement decisions, perhaps due to the use of mental health diagnoses in the current study rather than other indicators of mental health need. Future research should investigate potential bias present within psychosocial evaluations and resulting mental health diagnoses within the juvenile justice system to inform their utility in the placement decision‐making process, and how these social identities interact to influence each step along the juvenile justice system pathway to identify potential points of biased decision making that may compound the adverse effects of juvenile justice system involvement for youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary objective: Brain structures and their white matter connections that may contribute to emotion processing and may be vulnerable to disruption by a traumatic brain injury (TBI) occurring in childhood have not been thoroughly explored. Research design and methods: The current investigation examines the relationship between diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) metrics, including fractional anisotropy (FA) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), and 3-month post-injury performance on a task of emotion prosody recognition and a control task of phonological discrimination in a group of 91 children who sustained either a moderate-to-severe TBI ( n = 45) or orthopaedic injury (OI) ( n = 46). Main outcomes and results: Brain-behaviour findings within OI participants confirmed relationships between several significant white matter tracts in emotional prosody performance (i.e. the cingulum bundle, genu of the corpus callosum, inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) and the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF). The cingulum and genu were also related to phonological discrimination performance. The TBI group demonstrated few strong brain behaviour relationships, with significant findings emerging only in the cingulum bundle for Emotional Prosody and the genu for Phonological Processing. Conclusion: The lack of clear relationships in the TBI group is discussed in terms of the likely disruption to cortical networks secondary to significant brain injuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Low birth weight (LBW; below 2500 grams) is a general risk factor for a variety of neurodevelopmental difficulties. However, these children may remain more vulnerable to neurologic and environmental insults occurring years later. This prospective case series reports on children who sustained a mild, moderate, or severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) in middle childhood but who had also been born with birth weights below 2500 grams., Participants: PARTICIPANTS were 14 children with mild, moderate, or severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), 5 of whom had birth weights under 2500 grams (LBW) and 9 children with normal birth weight (NBW). All participants were drawn from a larger study on the long-term cognitive and behavioral impact of pediatric TBI and were matched on age, estimated socioeconomic status (SES), and severity of TBI (with NBW children actually having a slightly worse overall injury severity)., Results: At baseline, both groups exhibited similar scores on WJ-R Letter Word Identification and Calculations, Tower of London number solved, and CVLT-C total correct. Baseline group differences were observed on the CELF-III Formulated Sentences (NBW > LBW) and on the VABS Adaptive Behavior Composite and Socialization subdomain (LBW > NBW). Over 2 years, relative to the NBW group, the LBW group evidenced declines on both WJ-R subtests, CVLT-C total correct, CELF-III Formulated Sentences, and VABS Adaptive Behavior Composite and Socialization., Conclusions: Although preliminary in nature due to small sample size, findings suggest a history of LBW influences the recovery trajectory following childhood TBI. Academic and adaptive functioning and verbal memory appeared particularly affected.