Interpersonal Violence, Racial Discrimination, and Mental Health Symptoms Among Adolescents of Color in the Juvenile-Justice System.

This study investigated how interpersonal racial discrimination experiences contribute to mental health symptoms among justice-involved adolescents of color, alongside other forms of interpersonal violence such as parent–child violence, teen dating violence, and exposure to parental intimate partner violence (IPV). In a sample of 118 adolescents aged 14 to 17 (77.1% Black/African American), results showed that interpersonal racial discrimination independently and additively predicted trauma, internalizing, and externalizing symptoms both at baseline and three months later, even after accounting for other violence exposures. Contrary to expectations, higher levels of parent–child violence weakened the association between racial discrimination and mental health symptoms. The findings underscore the importance of including interpersonal racial discrimination as a distinct form of interpersonal violence in research and interventions addressing the mental health of justice-involved youth of color.