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Florida’s Youth Incarceration Problem Has a Proven Fix
Florida incarcerates more children than any other state in the country. Even while research shows harsh punishments and long sentences don't rehabilitate kids — they keep them coming back. There needs to be another way to hold kids accountable because, right now, we are manufacturing the outcomes...
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A Qualitative Exploration of ADHD, Prosocial Bonds, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Symptoms of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) affect up to 11 percent of children (Visser et al., 2013). There is strong empirical evidence that an ADHD diagnosis puts children at higher risk for significant academic impairment, weaker ties to pro-social institutions, increased...
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From Juvenile Hall to Clinical Care: De-Escalating Youth Trauma Through Deflection Pathways
This article examines how youth deflection differs from traditional diversion, and how behavioral health leaders are using deflection programs to de-escalate trauma and keep adolescents out of the justice system. Communities increasingly seek preventive alternatives to juvenile detention. Seven...
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Cannabis Legalization and Adolescent Behavioral Health: Are Current Policies Sufficiently Protecting Adolescents?
The rapid expansion of cannabis legalization across the U.S. has raised growing concerns about its impact on adolescents. Cannabis remains the most commonly used recreational drug among U.S. youth (Young-Wolff et al., 2026), and while cannabis use is not legal at the federal level, medical use has...
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How Federal Policy Is Reshaping the Funding of Youth Behavioral Health Treatment
The behavioral health crisis among adolescents is not a new story. For decades, clinicians, researchers, and policymakers have watched the statistics accumulate: an estimated 80 to 90% of adult substance use disorders have their roots in adolescence; half of all lifetime mental health conditions...
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What Looked Like Defiance Was Actually Grief: The Healing Power of Peer Support in Children’s Mental Health
Ten-year-old Marcus stopped talking after his father was incarcerated. At first, school staff assumed he was angry. Then they thought he was being oppositional. Over time, his silence became impossible to ignore. He stopped participating in class discussions. He isolated himself during lunch. He...
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We Don’t Need More Youth Mental Health Crisis Narratives – We Need to Create Affirming Spaces for Youth to Talk About Their Bodies
These are not kids in crisis. This observation grew increasingly certain as the conversation lingered, and so did the feeling that the conversation would remain painfully unfinished. After we wrapped up our workshop titled Resisting (dis)order and Reclaiming Neuroqueer Body Trust, some of the...
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Child Welfare and Behavioral Health: Foster Care, Family Court, and the Policy Intersection
Behavioral Health and Trauma Impacts Behavioral health is not a side issue in the child welfare system but rather is a system pressure that is likely to bring families into court in the first place (CDC, 2026). Research indicates that this is a concern. In a systematic review, Engler et al. (2022)...
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Parenting Through ADHD: What I Learned as a Clinician and a Mother
When I first noticed something was different about my son, I did not immediately think it was ADHD. That may sound surprising coming from someone with a clinical background in behavioral health, but the reality is that ADHD looks different in every child, especially when considering the stereotypes...
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The Rise of AI Companions and What it Means for Youth Mental Health
More and more young people are turning to AI for something we didn’t really anticipate a few years ago. Not just homework help. Not just curiosity. They’re using it to talk through problems, to vent, to ask questions they’re not ready or embarrassed to ask someone else. In some cases,...
