Institutional Trauma, Accountability, and Psychopathology in Residential and Juvenile-Justice Youth

Young people in residential care and juvenile-justice settings carry heavy burdens of adversity from early life, including violence, neglect, and deprivation. Moreover, institutions can themselves be sources of harm, especially for minors with multiple vulnerabilities. The term “institutional trauma” describes stressors inherent to congregate care and custody, such as placement instability, loss of autonomy, surveillance, coercive routines, peer violence, and stigma. These experiences layer onto earlier abuse, poverty, structural racism, and other disadvantages during sensitive developmental windows. The result is disproportionate rates of PTSD, depression, self-harm, substance use, and complex behavioral presentations that challenge standard services.

Crucially, institutional settings may not only fail to protect youth, but may directly contribute to or perpetuate cycles of trauma and abuse—raising urgent questions about the responsibilities and accountability of these organizations.

Despite urgent need, evidence is siloed across clinical, developmental, and forensic fields and too often neglects youth voices, cultural contexts, and cross-country differences in care and oversight. A culturally comparative lens is essential, as institutional structures, legal protections, and social norms vary across settings, shaping both risks and outcomes.

This Research Topic brings conceptual clarity and empirical focus to institutional trauma and its mental-health sequelae, highlighting not only youth outcomes but also the role and accountability of institutions themselves. This work lays the groundwork for better assessment, intervention, and policy for a highly marginalized population.

The problem is simple to name and hard to study: young people in residential care or custody often face day-to-day practices—surveillance, confinement, restraint, frequent moves—that can retraumatize and further victimize them, heightening exposure to peer or staff violence, exploitation, and sexual abuse. Power imbalances, placement instability, and weak safeguarding or complaint systems undermine accountability and inhibit reporting, especially for girls, LGBTQ+ youth, disabled and neurodivergent youth, and those with histories of maltreatment.

This Topic seeks to:
• Define and measure institutional stressors and victimization—including sexual victimization and polyvictimization—with rigor and precision across diverse settings and cultural contexts;
• Trace mechanisms linking these harms to PTSD, depression, self-harm, substance use, and psychosocial functioning, while identifying institutional and structural contributors and potential points of accountability;
• Evaluate and test preventive, restorative, and accountability-focused solutions at youth, staff, organizational, and system levels.

We welcome longitudinal and mixed-methods studies, youth-partnered designs, cross-system data linkages (care, education, justice, health), cultural and legal comparative work, and studies that explore organizational and staff accountability. The goal is actionable evidence to prevent victimization, improve safety, enhance treatment, strengthen accountability, and inform better policy.

Keywords: Institutional Trauma; Juvenile Justice; Residential Care; Victimization; Psychopathology.

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.