Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

High Value Correlates Of Caregiver Reported Counseling Service Need And Utilization For Adolescents At-Risk For Childhood Maltreatment And Neglect, Alejandro L. Vázquez, Tommy Chou, Cynthia M. Navarro Flores, Tyson S. Barett, Miguel T. Villodas, Melanie M. Domenech Rodríguez

Psychology Faculty Publications

Adolescents with a history of child maltreatment experience increased risk for psychopathology that sets them on a trajectory towards a range of difficulties in adulthood. Various factors influence caregivers’ decisions to seek mental health services (MHS) that could improve developmental outcomes. The present study applied a machine learning algorithm, elastic net, to a sample of 878 adolescent-caregiver dyads from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect. Analyses simultaneously examined a large number of factors to determine their ability to discriminate between caregivers who perceived a need for MHS and those who did not, as well as caregivers who utilized …