Substance use and conduct disorders are common amongarrested North American Indigenous youth and increase theirlikelihood of arrest

In North America, substance misuse is very common among young people involved with the juvenile justice system, and even more so among American Indian and Canadian First Nations youth. In new research, Kelley J. Sittner examines the relationship between substance use disorder and other mental disorders such as conduct disorder and ADHD among indigenous young people. She finds that the rates of conduct disorder and substance use disorder were almost twice as large among the arrested than non-arrested adolescents, and that those young people with such disorders were three or four times more likely to be arrested than those without.