Neonaticide is the act of murdering a newborn child within its first 24 hours of life. As these actions are considered deviant cases, there is a lack of understanding and research on what causes neonaticides to occur. This study examines whether neonaticide is a consequence of young women’s lack of mental health care or unrealistic societal expectations of young mothers. In news articles, bias and social reactions heighten fear and stigmas around neonaticide, which causes a false narrative. The goal of this research is to create an accurate picture of neonaticide and understand why the crime occurs. Findings show that neonaticide is an issue most prevalent among younger women under the age of 20, and those who are completely isolated during their pregnancy and delivery. The stress and fear of society and peers' opinions lead women to feel isolated and left with no choice but to take matters into their own hands. This research highlights contributing factors that lead women to commit these acts, with aims to provide prevention measures while exploring social factors that influence the psyche of neonaticide perpetrators.

In the United States, rural youth experience higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide than urban youth. When young people and their families seek help, there is often a delay in services due to a shortage of available mental health care in nearly all rural communities. A way to bridge this gap is to train mentors on how to support young people through evidence-based practices, like Interpersonal Psychotherapy – Adolescent Skills Training (IPT-AST). The IPT-AST model is designed to develop and strengthen young people's interpersonal skills. The goal of the study is to figure out the best way to make a package of techniques available to support the evolving mental health needs of youth in rural settings. A mixed-method approach will be used to evaluate the acceptability of the developed training. Data will be collected using surveys and focus groups made up of mentors and clinical supervisors. By the end of this project a potential tool/training will be developed so that eventually, youth in rural communities have access to consistent and reliable mental health support that will provide them much deserved relief.

Youth incarceration in the United States has declined by more than seventy percent since the early 2000s, marking one of the most significant shifts in the juvenile justice system. Despite this decline, racial disparities persist, and scholars note that the underlying causes are more complex and cannot be fully explained by lower crime rates alone. Although many attribute the decline to policy reforms, emerging evidence suggests that structural, demographic, and institutional forces may play a larger role. This study aims to identify the structural, political, and socioeconomic conditions that help explain why youth incarceration has declined across states over the past two decades. It investigates the structural factors associated with national declines in youth incarceration by updating and extending an existing state-level panel dataset originally covering 2000 to 2018 to include the most recent data available. The analysis uses state-level panel data that include youth incarceration rates, policy indicators, demographic characteristics, and socioeconomic conditions. The dependent variable is the state-level youth incarceration rate. Key independent variables capture demographic composition, state policy environments, measures of socioeconomic disadvantage, and system-level practices such as the availability of community-based alternatives. Preliminary expectations, based on prior findings, suggest that states with stronger community alternatives experience larger declines, while socioeconomic disadvantage slows decarceration. These findings highlight the importance of structural conditions in shaping youth justice outcomes and can guide policies that reduce harm and support positive developmental trajectories for justice-involved youth.

There’s evidence that suggests that a very young child decreases the voter turnout of their parents, while a school aged child increases the voter turnout of their parents. This has been interpreted by many political scientists to be due to the resource costs that young children impose on their parents while school aged children increase the salience of politics, especially local politics, in the lives of their parents. There is also evidence to suggest that voting may be habitual, that casting a vote in one election can make you more likely to vote in the future. These two phenomena have been studied independently but never together. There has not been an analysis of the effect of habitual voting on parents on a national scale. Using data from the American National Election Studies 2024 Time Series Study, I analyze voter turnout data and demographic information to assess, on a national scale, how habitual voting and children interact to affect the voter turnout of parents. This research analyzes macroscopic information about the voter turnout of parents, providing a greater understanding of parents as a part of the electorate.