Crosby A. Modrowski

• PhD
• Assistant Professor (Research) at Brown University

Family‐focused interventions for youth with juvenile legal system involvement place emphasis on improving caregiver wellbeing. However, there is limited work to date characterizing the prevalence and determinants of behavioral health concerns among these caregivers. The present study sought to examine among 100 caregivers of youth with juvenile leg...

This article provides an overview of the current state of assessment and clinical intervention approaches for youth with juvenile legal system (JLS) involvement. The review includes ( a ) a brief overview of characteristics of youth with JLS involvement; ( b ) current screening and assessment frameworks within the JLS that identify treatment needs;...

Background Amidst increasing opioid-related fatalities in adolescents and young adults (AYA), there is an urgent need to enhance the quality and availability of developmentally appropriate, evidence-based treatments for opioid use disorder (OUD) and improve youth engagement in treatment. Involving families in treatment planning and therapy augments...

Recognition of the high prevalence of trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress reactions among young offenders has led to calls for a shift toward the implementation of trauma-informed approaches in juvenile justice systems. However, meeting the clinical needs of youth in this population not only requires comprehending the profound effects of polyv...

Adolescents involved in the juvenile legal system (JLS) report high rates of traumatic event exposure and posttraumatic stress symptoms. Due to such elevated rates of exposure to potentially traumatic events and posttraumatic stress, it has been recommended that adolescents involved in the JLS receive access to trauma-focused screening upon each co...

Background Juvenile legal involved youth (JLIY) experience disproportionately high rates of suicidal and self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SSITB). Many JLIY lack access to evidence-based treatment specifically designed to treat SSITB, thereby increasing the overall risk of suicide. The overwhelming majority of JLIY are not placed in secure fac...

Objective: Trauma-informed perspectives and empirical research point to childhood trauma exposure as a risk factor for adolescent gang involvement. However, the mechanisms that help to explain this link are not well-understood. Recent theory has suggested the potential influence of posttraumatic stress symptoms, and specifically reckless or self-de...

The present study sought to identify if there is distinct mental health symptomology among child welfare‐involved youth depending on the category of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) endorsed. A chart review of child welfare‐involved youth (N = 129, ages 8–16) and caregiver reported ACEs and mental health/trauma symptoms was conducted. A K‐means...

Prior work has demonstrated that school connectedness correlates with several positive outcomes for adolescents. However, little is currently known about the efficacy of school connectedness in buffering emotionally maltreated youth from engaging in risk behaviors such as adolescent substance use. Guided by resilience theory, this study examined gr...

The Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument (MAYSI-2) is one of the most widely utilized screening measures for detecting mental health concerns among youth entering juvenile detention settings. Previous research has demonstrated clear patterns of sex differences in the severity of mental health symptoms among detained boys and girls. However, few...

Youths in the child welfare system experience high rates of placement changes and school transfers; therefore, prior research focused on variables that may be linked with such disruptions. Indeed, researchers have established that mental health symptoms (e.g., PTSD symptoms) are linked with placement disruptions. However, an important aspect of men...

Objective: This study examined the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary outcomes of internet-based Talking About Risk and Adolescent Choices (iTRAC), a tablet intervention designed to promote emotion regulation (ER) skills among middle schoolers as a strategy for reducing risk behaviors. Methods: Adolescents (12-14 years) were recruited f...

Previous research has provided robust evidence demonstrating that a notable proportion of youth become involved in both the child welfare (CW) system and the juvenile justice (JJ) system, a population often referred to as crossover youth. Prior work has identified a number of risk factors associated with crossing over between these systems. However...

Although evidence-based assessment is considered an essential component of evidence-based practice, few adolescents have access to evidence-based assessment. Despite experiencing high rates of mental health disorders, incarcerated justice-involved adolescents are rarely able to access evidence-based psychiatric care. In this article, we discuss the...

The revised criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual necessitated the development of new screening tools for youth, one of the most widely used of which is the UCLA Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Reaction Index for DSM-5 (RI-5). Thus far, the few studies that have investigated th...

Previous research has established that trauma exposure and subsequent posttraumatic stress symptoms confer risk for adolescent offending and involvement in the juvenile justice system. However, recent research and theory have called attention to the contributions of specific posttraumatic reactions, including posttraumatic dissociation (PD) and rec...

Background Previous research has demonstrated that youth involved in the juvenile justice system endorse diverse patterns of victimization. However, previous research investigating victimization profiles among youth involved in the juvenile justice system has primarily consisted of boys. Objective This study investigated victimization profiles and...

Risky behavior is common among traumatized youth and is associated with juvenile offending. This study examined predictors of posttraumatic risky behavior, the unique contribution of posttraumatic risky behavior in predicting offending, and tested whether a distinct class of youth was characterized by high levels of posttraumatic risky behavior. Pa...

Engagement in intimate partner violence (IPV) is related to a host of negative outcomes for youth, including posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Moreover, research indicates that the perpetration of violence may constitute a traumatic experience, termed perpetration trauma (PT), which, in turn, is related to elevated levels of PTSS. Little resear...

Objective: Previous research has established associations among childhood trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSSs), and adolescent nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI). In fact, numerous studies have suggested that PTSSs may serve as a mechanism linking trauma exposure and NSSI. However, studies to date have not utilized newer models of PT...

Among the 90% of adolescents involved in juvenile justice who have experienced traumatic victimization, a sub-group may be at highest risk due to histories of multiple types of interpersonal and non-interpersonal trauma, termed polyvictims. Latent class analyses (LCA) have identified polyvictimized subgroups in several studies of adolescents and ad...

The increasing prevalence of girls in the juvenile justice system suggests the importance of examining whether models of adolescent offending are differentiated by gender. Polyvictimization has emerged as a robust predictor of youth justice involvement, especially for girls, and research exploring mechanisms underlying the link between polyvictimiz...

Polyvictimization (PV) has been shown to be associated with psychosocial and behavioral impairment in community and high risk populations, including youth involved in juvenile justice. However, the mechanisms accounting for these adverse outcomes have not been empirically delineated. Symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and dissociation...

Research has demonstrated an association between childhood trauma exposure and adolescent aggression. This association may be explained by rejection sensitivity, defined as anger or anxiety in the anticipation of rejection, which can be a consequence of trauma exposure. Callous-unemotional (CU) traits also are associated with trauma exposure and ag...

Recent research has provided evidence for a dissociative subtype of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, previous research has primarily utilized samples of adults exposed to acute traumatic stressors. Therefore, further research is needed to investigate the dissociative subtype in samples of youth and those exposed to more chronic forms...

Sexual abuse (SA) is highly prevalent among detained youth and is associated with a number of deleterious outcomes associated with self-regulation deficits; however, less is known about the consequences of SA for boys. Thus, the current study examined posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and associated symptoms in a sample of detained youth (612 bo...

Recent scholarship on traumatic stress has suggested that particular types of traumatic stressors may result in different patterns of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Specifically, traumatic stressors that are interpersonal and involve betrayal have been found to be particularly detrimental to youths' psychological functioning. In add...

Objective: Screening for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is highly relevant for youth involved in the juvenile justice system given their high rates of trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress symptoms. However, to date, no studies have investigated the implications of the recent revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental D...

The construct of perpetration-induced trauma (PT) proposes that inflicting harm on others may constitute a traumatic event, a phenomenon which might be relevant to youth in gangs. This study investigated PT, trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and gang membership in a sample of 660 youth (484 boys, 176 girls) recruited from a detention...

Increasing attention has been drawn to the symptom of emotional numbing in the phenomenology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), particularly regarding its implications for maladaptive outcomes in adolescence such as delinquent behavior. One change in the definition of emotional numbing according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Men...

Objective: The inclusion of a dissociative subtype in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5) criteria for the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has highlighted the need for valid and reliable measures of dissociative symptoms across developmental periods. The Adolescent Dissociative Experiences S...

In this study, we tested the validity of a dissociative subtype in a sample of 225 detained adolescents (142 boys, 83 girls) likely meeting full or partial criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Competing theories of dissociation pose controversy regarding dissociation as a taxon versus a continuum, and results of the current study cont...

To date, scholars have established associations among non-suicidal self-injury and sexual abuse, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and dissociation. However, leading theoretical models of the mechanisms underlying the association between trauma and negative outcomes suggest a more parsimonious explanation in that deficits in emotion regulation may und...

The expression of posttraumatic stress symptoms during group therapy and how this might differ from the expression of those symptoms at home was evaluated in a group of preschool children exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV). The sample included 55 mother-child dyads. Reports of posttraumatic stress symptoms were collected from mothers and ch...

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/85305/1/crosbymo.pdf