Patricia K. Kerig

Although trauma exposure (TE) has been shown to be a robust predictor of youth involvement in the juvenile justice system, evidence regarding the role of TE amongst youth who recidivate has been more mixed. Recidivist youth are a population of particular concern, given evidence of declining mental health and diminished likelihood of returning to an adaptive developmental course. One way in which TE may contribute to these negative outcomes over time is through potentiating or “driving” mental health problems, which are especially prevalent among trauma-exposed youth in the justice system. To examine this hypothesis, longitudinal data were obtained over a 10-year period from a sample of 5615 juvenile justice-involved youth (1499 girls and 4116 boys) who completed a mental health screening at each admission to detention. Results of analyses assessing the associations among trauma exposure, linear and quadratic time, and mental health problems were consistent with the hypothesis that increases in TE were associated with increasing anger/irritability, depression/anxiety, somatic complaints, and suicidal ideation across repeat admissions. With the exception of alcohol/drug use, all mental health outcomes followed a quadratic trajectory over the course of multiple admissions. Rates of mental health problems were consistently highest for girls and White youth across all waves. These results add to our understanding of the role of trauma in mental health problems among persistent offenders and may help to inform interventions designed to reduce youth contact with the potentially iatrogenic effects of justice system involvement.

Core features of callous-unemotional (CU) traits (e.g., low empathy, lack of guilt, callousness) are underpinned by emotion processing deficits including dysfunction in emotion reactivity (ERc) and emotion regulation (ER). Additionally, recent research has suggested the presence of heterogeneity in CU traits, such that the primary variant is biologically rooted and marked by hypoarousal, whereas the secondary variant is thought to develop as a response to maltreatment and is marked by hyperarousal. To date, physiological measurement of ERc and ER processes via the parasympathetic nervous system have focused on static methods of measurement; however, dynamic approaches may provide a more nuanced picture of reactive and regulatory processes. The current study sought to identify whether CU trait variants differed on ERc and ER as indexed by both static and dynamic objective physiological markers with the goal of improving our understanding of CU trait development and informing future treatment targets. Participants consisted of 636 youth ages 12-18 recruited from juvenile detention centers. A latent profile analysis identified CU variants using CU traits, anxiety, and posttraumatic arousal and avoidance. Groups were subsequently compared on static and dynamic respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) indices of ERc and ER. Only one dynamic measure of ER (i.e., RSA inertia) uniquely differentiated primary and secondary groups, whereas static measures provided little discriminative utility. The current findings provide a more comprehensive understanding of CU trait heterogeneity with respect to emotion processing, allowing us to more effectively target variants in the treatment context.

It is well established within the literature that early childhood trauma and maltreatment increase risk for adolescent offending behaviors. However, the mechanisms underlying this association are not currently well understood. The construct of moral injury, or distress and psychopathology stemming from events that violate an individual’s deeply held moral beliefs, has most frequently been studied in adult veterans. However, researchers have recently begun to apply the concept of moral injury to child and adolescent populations. From a developmental psychopathology perspective, moral injury offers a novel lens through which to view the victim–offender overlap in adolescents. The current paper reviews existing empirical evidence regarding the prevalence and sources of moral injury in justice-involved youth. It further synthesizes theory and research from diverse subfields of developmental and clinical psychology and criminology in order to describe how disruptions to cognitive, affective, and social development might link moral injury with juvenile offending and justice involvement. A novel, dynamic model of moral injury and juvenile offending is proposed, and implications for future research, clinical practice, and juvenile justice policy are discussed.

This article provides an introduction and overview of the current special section devoted to developmental perspectives on trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress reactions. Although there have been many revisions to the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis in the four decades that have ensued since its inclusion in our diagnostic systems, and many decades of empirical and clinical work investigating the differential effects of traumatic stress on children and adolescents, a truly developmental perspective is still lacking in the diagnosis. In a call to address this gap, this article outlines principles of developmental psychopathology as applied to the phenomenology of trauma and points to potential developmental transformations in the expression of posttraumatic stress across developmental epochs. The introduction then goes on to describe the valuable contributions to the literature represented by the six teams of contributing authors to this present special section, in which they discuss stability and change in posttraumatic symptom expression across development, the current state of validation research on the proposed diagnosis of Developmental Trauma Disorder, complex symptom arrays in children who have been complexly traumatized, distinctions between Complex PTSD and emerging personality pathology, developmental perspectives on prolonged grief, and developmental considerations for understanding the intersection between trauma and moral injury. It is hoped that this collection of articles will serve to stimulate new research and inform effective interventions for young persons affected by traumatic stress.