NCJ Number
193916
Journal
Juvenile Correctional Mental Health Report Volume: 1 Issue: 5 Dated: July/August 2001 Pages: 65,69,75
Date Published
2001
Length
3 pages
Annotation
After providing background information on the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument, now in its second version (MAYSI-2), this article reviews its utility and reliability in identifying youths' mental health needs.
Abstract
The MAYSI-2 provides scores on six clinical scales, along with suggested cut-off scores that signal youths' potential need for immediate attention to their mental or emotional disturbances. The goal in developing the MAYSI-2, which began in 1994, was to produce a reliable and valid mental health screening instrument that could be used as a "triage" tool with every youth entering a juvenile justice program. The developers wanted an instrument that would take only a few minutes to administer and score, would not require a mental health professional to administer it, and would not be expensive for users. The MAYSI-2 was released in early 2000 and is now used in over 200 juvenile justice programs and facilities nationwide. The MAYSI-2 consists of 52 short questions about thoughts, emotions, or behaviors, to which youths respond "yes" or "no" regarding whether the statement has been true for them in the past few months. Youths' responses contribute to scores on six scales: drug/alcohol use, angry-irritable, depressed-anxious, somatic complaints, suicidal ideation, and thought disturbance. A seventh scale, traumatic experiences, does not refer to any mental or emotional disturbance, but provides an index of potentially traumatizing experiences from the youth's past. Although there is ample evidence of the MAYSI-2's reliability and utility, it must be used with the same caution and limits that would be necessary for most screening tools. It does have utility as a tool to identify youths' mental health needs. 3 references