Description: Health care policy and proposals for national health care reform have become some of the most contentious political issues of the decade. Garland Publishing announces a new series addressing the most significant issues in the area of health care policy and the business of health care in the United States. books in this multidisciplinary series will include studies of health care practice, the health care business, the implications of multicultural perspectives on health care for public policy, the impact of insurance on health care, and debates over national health care policy, including health care reform. This collection of timely works will offer significant scholarly perspectives on one of the most important issues in public policy.

In an age of growing conservatism, it may become increasingly difficult to persuade public policymakers to allocate scarce resources to helping a subpopulation of the homeless described merely by its high prevalence of substance abuse, mental illness, and criminal activity rather than as survivors of multiple abuses.

This book takes a stress and coping perspective in examining the relationships between maltreatment and specific indicators of psychological distress among a heterogeneous sample of urban homeless youth. Potential moderating and mediating factors such as gender, family characteristics, duration and frequency of homelessness, maltreatment characteristics, and service utilization are considered.

This is the only study on the topic in which the author has collected data on exposure to multiple types of child maltreatment, has used an array of standardized indicators of psychological distress, and has sampled youths from a multitude ofservice and street locations. When multiple measures of exposure to child abuse and neglect were examined, few homeless youths could be categorized as unexposed. Study findings highlight the need for interventions to be multidimensional and interdisciplinary so that they can effectively address the short-term and long-term psychological, social, and physical needs of homeless youths, to prevent eventual adult homelessness.

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