The prevalence of mental health challenges continues to worsen among adolescents, with Black American adolescents experiencing rates of suicide attempts that are increasing faster than any other racial and ethnic groups. Research has found that the neighborhood environment impacts mental health through the type and level of stress that people…

This paper proposes a new conceptual approach to the development and utilization of youth-led environmental assessments to inform the planning of youth-enabling environments. Interdisciplinary research has established the influential effects of the physical environment on children and adolescents' well-being and development, yet there is a gap in…

Through an ethnographic study of an afterschool program serving girls of color in the New York City metro area, this study examines how girls who are ethically Latina and racially Black embrace and articulate AfroLatinx identity. It asks, what are the contexts and institutional processes that facilitate the development of a Black identity among…

Sexual and gender minoritized (SGM) adolescents negotiate their outness in various social contexts as they navigate a heteronormative system. For many SGM adolescents, outness is associated with peer victimization, while for others, it is associated with increased feelings of connectedness. To support SGM adolescents in their outness journey,…

Violence is a major public health concern that particularly impacts Black young adults living in under-resourced, urban communities. There is limited research on promotive and protective factors that mitigate the impact of violence exposure on aggressive behavior. This study aims to address this gap by exploring positive factors across the…

Although prior research finds that poor neighborhood conditions are negatively associated with employment, little study has focused on emerging adults who formerly had contact with the juvenile justice system and are frequently engaged in informal job markets. Using a hybrid model and three waves from panel data with formerly juvenile…

Youth resilience is the product of multiple systems. Still, the biological, psychological, social, and environmental system factors that support youth resilience are incompletely understood. How these factors interact, and the situational and cultural dynamics shaping their interconnectedness, are also under-researched. In response, we report a…

Although research advocates for comprehensive cross-sector youth violence prevention efforts, mobilizing across sectors to translate scientific recommendations into practice has proven challenging. A unifying framework may provide a foundational step toward building a shared understanding of the risk and protective factors that impact youth…

During adolescence, young people develop crucial capacity for emotion regulation, and family context can be a risk or protective factor for adolescents developing affective disorders. We leveraged data from the Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey (N = 7664) to propose adolescent emotion regulation as a mediator between family conflict, family…

While there is a substantial body of leaving care research, the theorization of care leaving has been more limited. Only a few studies have incorporated a life course perspective, mainly in Global North contexts where life course perspectives may differ significantly from those in the Global South, including Africa. Drawing on findings from a…

School delinquency in public elementary, middle, and high schools has decreased in recent years, but is still a major issue that has negative mental health and academic implications for adolescents. Although research has focused on both individual-level and school-level explanations of school delinquency, it is not yet clear which macro-level…

Firearm suicides among adolescents have increased in the US and rates vary across racial and ethnic groups. In this study, we examined contextual information around adolescent firearm suicides and analyzed how incident characteristics vary across racial and ethnic groups. We analyzed firearm suicides among adolescents (ages 10-18 years) from 2004…

Youths' affinity for snack foods is well-documented; in various contexts, they sell chips, candy, and other goods. Adults may frame such sales as either entrepreneurial or deviant, which can contribute to positive youth development (on one hand) or cycles of disengagement and criminalization (on the other). Drawing on ethnographic and interview…

We used a mixed-methods online survey to recruit 616 young Australians whose parents had separated, to understand their experiences and how to better support them throughout the separation process. Persistent themes included conflict, lack of communication and agency, mental health concerns, and feelings of confusion, frustration, loss, and grief.…

Eight percent of adolescent girls were found to be engaged in problematic social media use. Problematic social media use is associated with serious physical and mental consequences. This study aimed to explore the effects of thin-ideal internalization on problematic social media use and the role of selfie-related behaviors and friendship quality.…