Mental Health Interventions in the Juvenile Justice System: A Scoping Review

Background: Adolescents in the juvenile justice system are vulnerable to mental health problems, a challenge that is exacerbated by the rehabilitation methods used in these settings. There is a need to understand adolescent mental health in juvenile detention settings with an emphasis on possible interventions that can improve adolescent mental health while incarcerated. This scoping review aims to identify mental health interventions in the juvenile justice system. Methods: We conducted a scoping review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) Checklist used to guide reporting. A search was conducted on the PsycINFO and Google scholar databases for original research articles published between 1990 and 2021. Results: Our search generated 3575 studies; 3506 were excluded after screening. Sixty-nine articles met the inclusion criteria after the first screening. A second review narrowed this to 23 studies. The total sample size for all included studies was 4,798 participants aged 11-20 years. Forty two percent of included studies investigated multisystemic therapy, 26% of studies examined cognitive therapies, 11% harnessed behavioral approaches, and the remaining 21% implemented counseling services, functional family therapy, and trauma affect regulation therapy. Conclusion: Our review identified 18 interventions that were administered to populations in juvenile correctional facilities. Multisystemic therapy and cognitive therapy were the most common, with MST showing more efficacy in improving juvenile mental health problems. Our study reveals the paucity of research on this important topic and identifies the need for more robust trials of character-building interventions in juvenile centers.