Roca is a nonprofit organization that works to change the lives of young people who are involved in the justice system and are at high risk of participating in violence or being affected by it. Such young people include those with a history of arrests, incarceration, violent behavior, or gang involvement, and often a disconnection from education…

This study evaluated the injury prevention program, Skills for Preventing Injury in Youth (SPIY) for Year 9 students (aged 13-14 years). The aim of SPIY was to reduce adolescent injury by reducing engagement in risk-taking behaviors. A randomized controlled trial was conducted and data analyzed with 32 schools, N = 2,739 students at baseline.…

Bullying victimization is a pervasive problem nationwide and is related to students' psychological distress, including increased loneliness, anxiety, depression, helplessness, and suicidal behaviors. Importantly, not all students respond to peer victimization in the same way. This study examined the effectiveness of students' coping strategies in…

Colombia has endured one of the world's longest internal displacement crises in recent history. Programs that address the practices and psychosocial wellbeing of the community of caregivers of young children in protracted crises are urgently needed. We developed and implemented a program aimed at strengthening the resilience and wellbeing of…

Queensland has recently seen the first conviction under the new one-punch law. In this instance a then 19-year-old male punched and fatally injured a 54-year-old man. This article details a six session manualised group therapy approach that was applied within a mainstream school in an effort to support adolescents who had been identified as having…

Whereas cognitive variables are hypothesized to play an important role in intimate partner violence (IPV) etiology and intervention, cognitive assessment methods have largely targeted offenders' explicit, controlled cognitive processing using paper-and-pencil questionnaires prone to social desirability biases. Using an implicit measure of…

There is overwhelming evidence that traumatic experiences in childhood--such as physical or sexual assault, gang violence, domestic violence, or sudden loss of a loved one--can lead to poor outcomes in adulthood. Research has identified evidence-based practices that improve outcomes for these children and families, and there has been a push at the…

Experiences of violence and behaviors that increase the risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted infection are high among women in the United States, and they often intersect (Meyer, Springer, & Altice, 2011; Montgomery et al., 2015; World Health Organization (WHO), 2010). However, there are few evidence-based HIV-prevention interventions that…

Cognitive behavioral therapies have positive effects on anger and aggression; however, individuals differ in their response to treatment. The authors previously found that dynamic factors, such as increases in readiness to change, are associated with enhanced outcomes for violence reduction training. This study investigated how less dynamic…

A substantial body of evidence indicates that interpersonal trauma increases risk for adolescent and adult depression. Findings from 4 clinical trials for adolescent depression show poorer response to standard cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) among depressed adolescents with a trauma history than youth without such a history. This paper reports…

Background: Research has shown for some time that addressing criminogenic need is one of the crucial aspects of reducing reoffending in all types of offenders. Criminogenic need such as anger or inappropriate sexual interest is considered to be crucial in the commission of the offence. The aim of the present study is to investigate the extent to…

Prison violence is a major concern in most correctional institutions. One intervention frequently used to reduce violent behavior is cognitive therapy. An involuntary cognitive program at a Midwestern state prison was evaluated for its impact on official misconduct. A total of 213 inmates were randomly assigned to the treatment (CHANGE) group (n =…

Clinical experiences show that many survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) suffer from a distressing feeling of being contaminated (FBC) even years or decades after the last experience of sexual violence. So far, this symptom has been neglected in research. The aim of this article is to illustrate this symptom and the necessity of a specialized…

Objective: We previously reported that a history of abuse was associated with a poorer response to combination treatment in the Treatment of Resistant Depression in Adolescents study (TORDIA). We now report on the nature and correlates of abuse that might explain these findings. Method: Youth who did not benefit from an adequate selective…

Objective: To assess the efficacy of trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) delivered by nonclinical facilitators in reducing posttraumatic stress, depression, and anxiety and conduct problems and increasing prosocial behavior in a group of war-affected, sexually exploited girls in a single-blind, parallel-design, randomized,…