The dual-factor framework on which the AMHS is built emerged from a growing body of evidence showing that the absence of psychopathology does not guarantee flourishing, and that some adolescents who report low distress also report low life satisfaction, weak engagement, and poor functioning. Studies dating back nearly two decades have documented the existence of groups that traditional symptom-based screening misses entirely: young people with high well-being but elevated symptoms, and others with low symptoms but poor subjective well-being. The former may appear troubled on standard checklists despite feeling satisfied with their lives, while the latter can be invisible to screening systems keyed to symptom counts, even though their low well-being predicts future difficulties. By conceptualizing mental health as the coexistence of two independent dimensions, the dual-factor model promises to identify vulnerable students that conventional instruments overlook, and it provides the conceptual architecture for the new scale.

Developing a psychometrically sound instrument for this purpose required the researchers to move through a staged validation process involving three large independent samples of secondary school students in Guangdong Province, China. The first sample, comprising 608 adolescents with a mean age of 15.02 years, of whom 51.3 percent were female, was used for initial item analysis and exploratory factor analysis, the classical first steps in scale construction. Item analysis identifies poorly performing items that fail to correlate meaningfully with the total score or with their intended construct, while exploratory factor analysis allows the underlying dimensional structure of the item pool to emerge from the data rather than being imposed in advance. The researchers used this phase to refine their item pool and establish a preliminary factor structure consistent with the dual-factor framework.

The second sample, substantially larger at 1,673 adolescents with a mean age of 14.91 years, of whom 53.0 percent were female, served as an independent replication dataset for refining the factor structure. Replicating an exploratory solution in a fresh sample is a critical safeguard against overfitting, the tendency for a model to capture idiosyncratic noise in one dataset that will not generalize to another. By confirming that the preliminary structure held in a second, demographically similar but statistically independent cohort, the team strengthened the claim that the scale’s dimensions reflect stable features of adolescent mental health rather than artifacts of a particular group of respondents.

The third and largest sample, 2,486 adolescents with a mean age of 14.93 years and 52.2 percent female, was reserved for the most demanding analyses. Here the researchers deployed exploratory graph analysis, a relatively recent network-based approach to estimating the number of latent dimensions in psychological data. Instead of relying on eigenvalues or parallel analysis alone, exploratory graph analysis treats items as nodes in a network, links them through partial correlations, and identifies communities of densely connected items as distinct psychological dimensions. Simulation studies have shown that this technique performs well in recovering the true number of latent factors, and its inclusion alongside confirmatory factor analysis reflects the methodological state of the art in contemporary scale validation. Confirmatory factor analysis then tested a priori structural models against the data, providing formal goodness-of-fit evaluation of the hypothesized multidimensional architecture.

The analyses converged on a clear result: a 28-item multidimensional structure that the data supported across all three samples. Beyond structural validity, the scale demonstrated satisfactory reliability, meaning that its scores are consistent and precise enough to be trusted for individual-level decisions rather than merely group-level research. Perhaps most importantly for a tool intended for school-wide deployment, the AMHS exhibited measurement invariance across gender. Measurement invariance is the psychometric property that a scale functions equivalently across subgroups, so that a given score carries the same meaning whether it is produced by a boy or a girl. Without invariance, comparisons between groups risk conflating genuine differences in mental health with differences in how the instrument behaves. Demonstrating invariance means school psychologists can compare gender-based patterns in AMHS scores without fear that the measuring stick itself is warped.

The implications for school-based screening are substantial. Mass screening programs in schools face a persistent tension between comprehensiveness and feasibility: longer instruments yield richer data but impose greater burden on students, teachers, and counseling staff, and shorter screens tend to be unidimensional, usually focusing exclusively on distress. A 28-item scale that operationalizes both negative and positive dimensions of mental health in a single administration offers a practical compromise. It is brief enough to be administered to entire classrooms or grades, yet conceptually rich enough to sort students into the four profiles the dual-factor model distinguishes: those with low distress and high well-being who are genuinely flourishing, those with both high distress and low well-being who need urgent intervention, and the two often-missed groups in between, each of whom may require different forms of support. Early identification of these heterogeneous profiles allows schools to tailor prevention and intervention resources more precisely, directing clinical attention to symptomatic students while channeling well-being promotion toward those who lack positive functioning without exhibiting symptoms.

The Chinese context of the study also matters. Adolescent mental health in China has drawn increasing attention from researchers and policymakers, with recent commentaries in major medical journals arguing that the scale of the problem among Chinese youth demands more systematic surveillance and response. Culturally appropriate, psychometrically validated instruments are a prerequisite for that response, since scales developed in Western samples may not translate cleanly across languages, educational systems, and cultural norms around emotional expression. The AMHS was developed and validated entirely within Chinese secondary schools, giving schools in China an indigenous tool whose items and structure were tested on the population in which they will actually be used. The authors suggest the instrument may be useful for school-based mental health screening and early identification, effectively positioning it as infrastructure for a preventive mental health system rather than a purely academic research measure.

The methodological rigor of the validation pipeline deserves emphasis, because it reflects broader best-practice standards in psychological measurement. The staged three-sample design mirrors contemporary recommendations for scale development, which call for separating item generation, exploratory analysis, and confirmatory testing across independent cohorts to guard against capitalizing on chance. The combination of classical techniques such as exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis with modern network-based dimensionality estimation, alongside formal reliability analysis and invariance testing, places the AMHS among the more thoroughly vetted instruments in the adolescent mental health literature. The work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China, and the study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Guangzhou University, with written informed assent obtained from all adolescent participants and written informed consent from their parents or legal guardians, in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

The broader significance of the study lies in what it signals about the changing science of mental health assessment. Over the past two decades, researchers have increasingly argued that mental health is not merely the absence of mental illness but a positive state of emotional, psychological, and social functioning, a view that has been institutionalized in frameworks such as the mental health continuum from languishing to flourishing. The World Health Organization’s recent global reporting has reinforced the urgency of transforming mental health systems, and adolescence has emerged as a critical window, since roughly half of lifetime mental disorders have their onset during the teenage years and adolescent distress predicts outcomes ranging from academic failure to self-harm in adulthood. Instruments like the AMHS operationalize this modern understanding at the level of practical screening, giving schools a way to detect both the students who are struggling and those who are surviving without thriving. As demand grows worldwide for universal, school-based mental health monitoring, validated dual-factor measures developed with this level of psychometric care are likely to become an increasingly central part of the toolkit, and the Guangzhou team’s scale offers a template for how such tools can be built and tested.

The numbers behind the proposal are sobering. The point prevalence of eating disorders in the general population has more than doubled in roughly two decades, climbing from 3.5 percent between 2000 and 2006 to 7.8 percent between 2013 and 2018, and an estimated 20 million people in Europe alone now live with these conditions. The rise has been global and became particularly evident during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Although anyone can be affected regardless of age, gender or background, incidence peaks in young women aged 15 to 19, with the sharpest spike at age 16—and clinicians report an alarming emergence of cases in progressively younger children. Within this vulnerable demographic, athletes carry an exceptionally high risk compared with non-athletes, and the burden escalates sharply in aesthetic disciplines, endurance sports and weight-class competition, where leanness and body control are effectively written into the sport itself.

At the center of the framework sits a phenomenon the authors call maladaptive exercise: physical activity that is excessive, compulsive and driven by weight or shape control rather than by health, enjoyment or performance. Where adaptive training flexes around illness, rest and life circumstances, maladaptive exercise is rigid and rule-bound, persists through injury and sickness, and produces acute distress when a session is missed. Its footprint in clinical populations is enormous: estimates cited in the Comment put lifetime prevalence at 88 percent among people with eating disorders, with a point prevalence of 48 percent, and the behavior is strongly associated with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and muscle dysmorphia. Because training hard is socially celebrated, it hides in plain sight while its physiological toll accumulates, from cardiovascular, renal and musculoskeletal complications to a heightened risk of suicide. By the time most cases reach clinical attention, the disease is already advanced.

Physical activity and sport professionals occupy a paradoxical position in this landscape. Across Europe, the workforce is heterogeneous—kinesiologists, personal trainers and fitness coaches in sport settings, physical education teachers in schools, and sports medicine physicians—but all share one defining characteristic: regular, close contact with at-risk individuals in their training environments. In 2020, the Australian Institute of Sport issued a position statement calling on coaches and support staff to participate in early identification. A year later, the American Academy of Pediatrics urged teachers, coaches and athletic trainers to promote healthy nutrition and exercise, avoid weight stigmatization and recognize warning signs. In 2023, the International Olympic Committee’s consensus on relative energy deficiency in sport, known as REDs, called for engaging coaches, parents and managers, and prioritizing education over body weight. Yet these recommendations targeted elite athletes surrounded by multidisciplinary medical teams, sports dietitians and mental health specialists. The epidemiological reality is nearly inverted: most people engaging in maladaptive exercise are recreational exercisers and amateurs training in commercial fitness centers, community sports clubs or school programs—settings with no internal medical or psychological support at all. No European consensus has yet addressed this role for non-elite populations.

The only European proof of concept comes from Norway, where a one-year educational intervention studied by Martinsen and colleagues significantly improved coaches’ knowledge of eating disorders. But the study also exposed a limitation that shapes the entire new framework: better knowledge among coaches did not automatically translate into earlier identification of affected athletes in everyday practice. Education, in other words, must reduce the practical and psychological barriers to recognition and referral, not merely transfer facts. Well-intentioned but misguided practices by inadequately trained professionals—inappropriate comments about weight or body shape, the prescription of non-evidence-based nutritional plans, the minimization of clinical red flags and the inadvertent reinforcement of compulsive training patterns—can themselves cause iatrogenic harm, a concern the American Academy of Pediatrics has raised explicitly. Any system pushing non-medical professionals toward detection must pair opportunity with strict boundaries.

My Fit Friend was designed to fill that vacuum. Coordinated from Italy with partners in Portugal, Spain and Turkey, and supported by the Erasmus+ Sport Programme (EU project number 101184114), the initiative adapts elite-sport recommendations to recreational and youth sport, targeting young people aged 11 to 18. Its architecture rests on two complementary pillars. The first is structured education: a minimum of six hours of in-person training, with optional online participation, delivered by physicians specialized in sports medicine and child and adolescent neuropsychiatry. The curriculum covers the physiology of nutrition and physical activity, the epidemiology and clinical features of eating disorders and body dysmorphic concerns, practical guidance on approaching suspected cases and project-specific procedures, with pre- and post-training questionnaires tracking what actually sticks. Communication receives particular attention: participants practice non-judgmental language and open questions for exploring sensitive topics, and are coached in empathy, active listening and clarity about their role to reduce blaming and stigmatization.

To scale beyond a single cohort, the project invested heavily in a train-the-trainer model, preparing master trainers who can sustain standards within their organizations and cascade knowledge across the sport ecosystem. The second pillar is the My Fit Friend diary, an observational tool built around eight key domains: training frequency, patterns and setting; the psychological dimensions of training; food habits; self-perception and body image; social engagement; and social media influence. The developers grounded the instrument in a systematic review of the eating disorder literature, then analyzed eating-disorder-related content on social media to align the questions with colloquial, easily understandable language, before refinement through expert consensus among specialist physicians. Crucially, the diary is not a diagnostic instrument. It exists to help professionals document concerning behaviors over time—including details such as extra training performed elsewhere, social media content or eating patterns outside sport settings, which only surface if the individual discloses them—so that patterns that would otherwise evaporate from memory are preserved for referral conversations.

The project’s most technologically ambitious component is its avatar-based simulation training. Avatar-based interventions and immersive virtual reality are a promising frontier in eating disorder care, and recent evidence shows they can train healthcare professionals to assess mental health disorders with outcomes comparable to or better than traditional methods. In the My Fit Friend protocol, participants interact in real time with an avatar operated by trained medical personnel, through live question-and-answer exchanges built around two prototypical cases: an adolescent female showing early-onset eating disorder behaviors such as dietary restriction and excessive training, and a young adult male with body dysmorphic concerns focused on muscularity. Each one-hour session ends with a facilitated debriefing, creating a safe space to practice risk recognition and difficult communication with no risk to real individuals. The format matters psychologically: research indicates avatar-based training reduces communication barriers, encourages exploration of challenging situations and lets facilitators control the learning stimuli, whereas conventional role-play can heighten evaluation anxiety because the counterpart’s identity is known. Because the system relies on standard videoconferencing technology, it can be adapted to other recreational settings at relatively contained cost, with in-person role-play as a fallback.

What should a sentinel actually watch for? The framework catalogs the behavioral signatures of maladaptive exercise: a progressive increase in load through duration, intensity or frequency, accompanied by shrinking flexibility in scheduling; distress when workouts are missed; insistence on exercising despite illness or injury; and “extra” or “secret” sessions beyond the prescribed plan—compulsive patterns rather than goal-oriented commitment. Context adds further cues: a move from group to solitary training, avoidance of situations where the body might be visible, or exercising at unusual hours to evade observation. Although exercise professionals are explicitly barred from conducting nutritional assessments, they can observe food-related behaviors such as avoiding team meals, strict dietary rules beyond sports nutrition, or preoccupation with food timing, composition or calories. Body image red flags include frequent body-checking, baggy clothing used for concealment and persistent dissatisfaction despite objective evidence; in males, concern often fixates on muscularity and leanness, with rigid “bulk and cut” cycles that can resemble binge-purge patterns. Social media compounds the pressure: constant checking of fitness content and comparison with influencers are warning signs themselves. The referral logic is graduated: when multiple warning signs persist over time, professionals are encouraged to refer; ambiguous situations are monitored first; and clearly severe cases warrant prompt medical evaluation through local health pathways, with parents or legal guardians involved for anyone under 18.

The authors are emphatic about where the sentinel’s job ends. The goal is to monitor a “fracture” in global functioning—a shift, for instance, from exercise as enjoyment to rigid, compulsive obligation—and to serve as a bridge for communication, never to diagnose or treat. The position draws its power from trust rather than clinical authority: for many children and adolescents, the coach is an approachable, non-judgmental figure outside the family, especially when the coach is a current or former athlete whose habits are read as a standard. Scaling the model is a question of policy. The team proposes making eating disorder awareness and systematic observation tools mandatory components of European professional certifications, and building fast-track referral pathways between community fitness centers and local mental health services. They are candid about the obstacles: professional qualifications range from brief course certificates to university degrees across the continent, curricula prioritize biomechanics and performance over mental health literacy, and health systems differ radically in organization, funding and access. Where trainers are mostly privately employed, such pathways would need formal agreements between private providers and public services; municipal centers could integrate more easily, though sustainable funding remains a constraint. Pilot projects backed by national health systems or European funding, the authors argue, are a pragmatic first step. If they succeed, the ordinary gym could be recast as what the project envisions: a protective environment that catches the earliest fractures in a young person’s functioning, long before those fractures become the reason a clinician finally sees them.

The backdrop to this advancement is the compelling understanding that suicidal behavior is often precipitated by an intense sensation of entrapment—a profound experience where individuals perceive themselves as caught in an unbearable internal or external predicament. This psychological state, previously quantified by the comprehensive but cumbersome 16-item Entrapment Scale (ES), has now been distilled into a practical four-item form without sacrificing diagnostic accuracy or predictive power. This brevity addresses critical bottlenecks in clinical environments that demand swift yet reliable screening processes.

Underpinned by rigorous psychometric evaluation, the study recruited 407 adolescents diagnosed with depression from outpatient psychiatric clinics, ensuring the scale’s relevance to populations at elevated suicide risk. Researchers applied advanced statistical methodologies, including confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory, to validate the structural integrity and item performance of the E-CSF. Their analyses delineated two distinct dimensions of entrapment: “internal,” reflecting subjective psychological distress, and “external,” denoting surrounding environmental pressures.

The dual-factor model of the E-CSF not only affirms theoretical distinctions in suicide psychology but also enhances clinical interpretability, enabling practitioners to discern whether a patient’s entrapment is primarily rooted in self-perception or external circumstances. This nuanced insight is crucial for tailoring therapeutic interventions that address the specific drivers of an adolescent’s suicidal ideation and behavior, thereby improving treatment efficacy.

Essential to the scale’s design was selecting the most informative items from each entrapment dimension. Through item response theory, two high-performing questions per factor were identified, yielding a concise instrument with exceptional internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.89). This statistical robustness confirms that the E-CSF reliably captures the essence of entrapment with minimal respondent burden, a pivotal consideration when assessing vulnerable youth in crisis.

Comparative analyses revealed a striking correlation (r = 0.95) between the E-CSF and the original full-length Entrapment Scale, underscoring the new scale’s fidelity. More impressively, the E-CSF demonstrated slightly stronger associations with critical clinical variables such as suicidal ideation and behaviors, suggesting enhanced sensitivity to the psychological states predictive of imminent risk. This trait positions the E-CSF as a superior screening tool capable of refining the precision of suicide prevention efforts.

Further reinforcing its clinical utility, the E-CSF showed robust concurrent validity through meaningful correlations with established measures of depression and anxiety, both of which are intricately linked to suicidality. The equivalence of associations implies that the brief scale does not compromise on capturing comorbid symptomatology, thereby offering a comprehensive psychological profile in a condensed format.

The study’s assessment of predictive accuracy via receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis yielded an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.81, signifying good discriminative validity. This metric indicates the E-CSF’s adeptness in distinguishing adolescents at genuine suicide risk from their lower-risk peers—a capability vital for prioritizing clinical resources and interventions. The establishment of an optimal cutoff score of 7 further simplifies the decision-making process, providing clinicians with actionable thresholds.

Beyond its psychometric strengths, the E-CSF’s significance lies in its practical applicability within real-world mental health landscapes. Suicide prevention among adolescents remains a pressing public health challenge worldwide, demanding rapid identification tools that can be seamlessly integrated into diverse clinical workflows, from outpatient clinics to emergency settings. The E-CSF’s ultra-brief format, combined with its strong empirical foundation, meets this urgent need.

Moreover, the development of a scale specifically attuned to adolescents addresses an important gap left by existing tools predominantly designed for adult populations. Adolescents possess unique developmental and psychological profiles, requiring instruments that are sensitive to their particular modes of distress and expression. The E-CSF responds to this necessity, fostering more age-appropriate assessment and potentially enhancing engagement and accuracy.

The implications of this advancement extend into broader suicide prevention strategies, underscoring the value of employing focused psychological markers such as entrapment for risk stratification. By pinpointing individuals whose internal and external worlds trap them in cycles of despair, healthcare providers can more effectively deploy tailored interventions aimed at alleviating these pressures—whether through psychotherapy, pharmacological means, or supportive social services.

In sum, the Entrapment–Clinical Screening Form represents a seminal contribution to the landscape of adolescent mental health assessment. Its meticulous development, grounded in sophisticated psychometrics and clinical sensitivity, paves a path toward swift, reliable, and effective detection of suicide risk. As healthcare systems worldwide grapple with the rising tide of youth depression and suicidality, tools like the E-CSF offer a beacon of hope, enabling timely interventions that could save countless young lives.

As this brief scale embarks on broader application, it also invites further exploration and adaptation across varied cultural contexts and clinical populations. Future research will undoubtedly expand on this foundation, refining cutoff values, integrating digital platforms for automated screening, and exploring longitudinal predictive capacities. Nonetheless, the current evidence establishes the E-CSF as an essential instrument in the arsenal against adolescent suicide.

With mental health increasingly recognized as a pillar of overall well-being, innovations such as the Entrapment–Clinical Screening Form exemplify the synergy of scientific rigor and clinical pragmatism. By condensing complex psychological constructs into accessible tools without diluting their diagnostic potency, researchers are setting new standards for mental health screening, ensuring that no adolescent at risk remains undetected.

The advent of the E-CSF marks not just a methodological triumph but a compassionate shift toward understanding and addressing the urgent emotional crises confronting today’s youth. It embodies a commitment to blending empathy with empirical validation, fostering a future where adolescent depression and suicide are met with swift, precise, and effective care.

Subject of Research:
Development and validation of a brief, clinically practical entrapment scale for adolescents diagnosed with depression to enhance suicide risk prediction.

Article Title:
Development and validation of a brief entrapment scale for adolescents with depression: psychometric evaluation and suicide risk prediction

Article References:
Lin, Y., Chen, X., Lin, J. et al. Development and validation of a brief entrapment scale for adolescents with depression: psychometric evaluation and suicide risk prediction. BMC Psychiatry (2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-025-07525-5

Image Credits:
AI Generated

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-025-07525-5

Maltreatment during childhood has long been linked to various mental health challenges that persist into adolescence and adulthood. This study emphasizes that the way we screen for such maltreatment exposes vulnerabilities within our healthcare systems. The current methodologies may not only be inaccurate but can also perpetuate biases that affect the treatment and outcomes for the adolescents who need help the most. The researchers argue fervently for an overhaul of these screening processes to prevent further marginalization of already at-risk populations.

The study utilizes statistical analysis to evaluate existing screening tools, assessing their accuracy in identifying adolescents who have experienced maltreatment. This rigorous examination highlights stark discrepancies in how these tools perform across different demographics. For some groups, the screening tools may yield false negatives, resulting in a failure to detect and address critical mental health issues. Such oversights create a perilous environment where the affected youth remains unseen, leading to a lifetime of untreated mental health problems.

Moreover, the researchers explore the intricate relationship between the accuracy of screening methods and the fairness of mental health care delivery. They argue that if certain groups are consistently overlooked due to wrong assumptions made by these screening tools, it directly feeds into systemic inequities. This creates a vicious cycle where the most vulnerable are continuously denied the help they desperately need. Their work urges policymakers to take a more holistic approach, taking into account the intersectionality of race, socioeconomic status, and previous trauma when developing screening methods.

Furthermore, Choi and Cohen advocate for a paradigm shift toward a more evidence-based form of diagnostics and treatment. They argue that mental health care should not be one-size-fits-all but rather tailored to meet the unique needs of each adolescent, factoring in their individual circumstances and histories of maltreatment exposure. Such an approach could significantly improve the quality of care, leading to better mental health outcomes for adolescents navigating the tumultuous waters of adolescence amidst emotional distress.

The researchers also propose the use of technology and artificial intelligence in refining screening processes. They suggest that leveraging AI can not only enhance the accuracy of maltreatment-exposure screenings but can also help identify mental health risks before they escalate. This proactive approach could be revolutionary for the field, shifting from a reactive to a preventive model that emphasizes early intervention. By harnessing the power of data and predictive analytics, healthcare providers could become more adept at recognizing and responding to the nuanced needs of adolescents.

In addition to technological advancements, the study emphasizes the importance of training mental health professionals. Emphasizing cultural competence and sensitivity is paramount; practitioners must understand the various contexts in which maltreatment occurs. By enhancing training and education around these issues, mental health professionals can better identify and treat adolescent patients who have faced maltreatment. Cultural competency not only benefits the provider-patient relationship but also ensures that marginalized populations receive equitable care.

As the findings of Choi and Cohen continue to resonate through the field, discussions around legislative changes are increasingly at the forefront. The study highlights an urgent need for policies that prioritize the mental health of adolescents, particularly in communities that historically suffer from a lack of resources and representation in healthcare. By advocating for legislative frameworks that support comprehensive mental health screening practices, the likelihood of improving overall outcomes rises significantly.

Public awareness and education about maltreatment and its long-term effects are also crucial components of the conversation. As communities become more informed about the implications of maltreatment exposure, the stigma surrounding mental health can begin to dissipate. This cultural shift is essential in promoting acceptance and seeking help among adolescents who may feel isolated and voiceless in their struggles. The researchers argue that community engagement initiatives could play a transformative role in raising awareness and advocating for at-risk youth.

The study presents a powerful narrative about not just uncovering the issue of maltreatment exposure but also addressing the systemic factors contributing to its persistence. By engaging various stakeholders—healthcare providers, educators, community leaders, and policymakers—the quest for improved mental health screening for adolescents can be a collaborative effort. This multi-faceted approach can foster a supportive environment conducive to healing and mental wellness.

In conclusion, Choi and Cohen’s exploration of maltreatment-exposure screening represents a crucial step toward enhancing adolescent mental health. Their recommendations hold the potential to reshape how the healthcare system identifies and serves this vulnerable population. By addressing the accuracy and fairness of screening processes and advocating for tailored, evidence-based care, the hope for a brighter future for adolescents experiencing mental health challenges becomes more attainable.

Their findings not only call upon the medical community but also urge society at large to reconsider the narratives surrounding mental health and treatment. As we stand on the precipice of meaningful change, informed by research and empathy, the goal must be clear: a future where all adolescents, regardless of their backgrounds and experiences, have access to the mental health care they deserve.

Subject of Research: Maltreatment-exposure screening and its effect on adolescent mental health

Article Title: Maltreatment-Exposure Screening and Adolescent Mental Health: An Evidence-Based Medicine Perspective on Accuracy and Fairness

Article References:

Choi, J.W., Cohen, J.R. Maltreatment-Exposure Screening and Adolescent Mental Health: An Evidence-Based Medicine Perspective on Accuracy and Fairness.
Journ Child Adol Trauma (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40653-025-00767-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s40653-025-00767-1

Keywords: maltreatment, adolescent mental health, screening accuracy, healthcare equity, evidence-based medicine, cultural competency, early intervention, systemic inequities.