This research examines the perceived impact of 50 Youth who are taking part in a correspondence program developed by Obie who is currently on death row in Texas. This project examines the importance of credible messengers using their lived experience to inspire others to change and learn from their past choices that led them to incarceration. The overall outcome of this study is centered on unveiling the importance of individuals like Obie as critical assets to the community as a credible messenger who can mentor youth to become successful productive community members and create a pathway that they can follow to not end up in the same situation. This paradigm allows us to see credible messengers as protectors of communities and gives those on death row who show remorse a chance to receive clemency and be involved in social justice projects from behind the wall that impacts the lives of young people in positive ways.

Youth within the foster care system often experience traumatic events such as childhood abuse and neglect prior to entering foster care and may suffer from mental health disorders. These experiences may lead youth to reflect on their identity and self-perceptions. Erik Erikson’s identity vs role confusion psychosocial development stage takes into account how adolescents explore various personal values, beliefs, and goals to form their own personal sense of identity. In this research, I will use newsletter columns (including testimonies and impact stories) from youth in Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), a foster care program throughout the United States that allows volunteers to advocate for youth within the system. While analyzing the youth stories, I will look for ways youth construct their identity through language, and if there are differences in descriptions for pre-program identity and post-program identity. Discourse analysis will be used to analyze how youth use language to describe identity. Ten newsletters columns will compose an initial sample used to explore similarities and differences in expressed identities and will be used to create a typology of identity-expressing behavior. The preliminary results will be reported and will provide a basis for analysis of additional cases. The analyses will investigate descriptions of pre-program identity contain more negative traits and fewer positive traits than descriptions of post-program identity. This study will ideally produce a typology on various ways that identity can be constructed through language, and to provide a set of discourse markers for future research.

It has been widely researched and recognized that adoption in childhood is associated with disruptions in the mental well-being of an adoptee at some point in their development. Access and utilization of mental health care resources are known to be effective in the treatment and development of mental health disorders, though these constructs may differ in adopted individuals. A significant gap exists in demonstrating how the perception of access to effective mental health care may have an impact on the relationship between adoption and the later development of mental health disorders. The present study aims to address this potential connection by assessing adoptees’ retrospectively reported experiences of mental health care immediately following their adoptions in childhood. Using sources from within the fields of developmental and clinical child psychology, unique connections of mental health are analyzed between two notable samples: domestically and internationally adopted children and adolescents. More specifically, the present study argues that when comparing between both internationally and domestically adopted individuals who were adopted between the ages of 2-12, international adoptees, as a result of social and cultural barriers, will have perceived less access to mental health care resources; subsequently, these individuals will report higher levels of depressive symptoms and less favorable attitudes towards seeking out mental health care in adulthood. This project, which sheds light on an important, yet disadvantaged population, addresses the disparities that exist within the mental health care field and strives to bridge the gaps within the existing literature.