Chapter 9
Marginalized Emerging Adults and Community Mental Health
Chapter Overview
Emerging adulthood is a critical developmental stage that is characterized by increased autonomy, neurological development, and heightened exposure to environmental and social stressors. However, Black and Hispanic emerging adult males living in marginalized communities are disproportionately affected by structural inequities, such as systemic racism, poverty, limited access to quality education, employment, and fragmented healthcare systems. These inequities increase the vulnerability for substance use, mental health issues, and involvement with the criminal justice system. This chapter examines how community risk and protective factors influence emotional regulation, decision-making, and long-term developmental outcomes among marginalized emerging adults, and the need to implement services at all social levels across the emerging adult life span.
The Recovery-Oriented System of Care is a comprehensive, community-based framework that integrates prevention, early intervention, treatment, and recovery support across eight dimensions of wellness: emotional, physical, social, spiritual, occupational, intellectual, environmental, and financial. The framework highlights the essential role of mental health professionals as the catalyst for implementing a culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and collaborative approach through practice, advocacy, research, and policy. Therefore, transitioning service delivery from reactive, intervention-driven models to prevention-focused approaches, fostering resilience and sustainable outcomes that address long-term challenges that adversely impact emerging adults in marginalized communities.
Reflective Questions
Designed to encourage critical thinking, real-world application, and meaningful discussion.
- How does emerging adulthood differ from adolescence and established adulthood?
- In what ways does structural inequality alter the developmental trajectory of emerging adults?
- Why do service systems often lose clients at age 18 or 21?
Resource Connect
Links to professional standards, policy frameworks, and cross-referenced chapters that support deeper exploration.content.
Transitional-Age Youth Research
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. (2024). Policy statement on mental health care for transition-age youth. AACAP generally defines transition-age youth as people approximately 15 to 26 years old. The statement emphasizes developmentally appropriate and continuous mental-health care during a period involving changes in education, employment, housing, family relationships, legal status, and eligibility for child- and adult-service systems.
McCormick, K. A., et al. (2022). Mental health service experiences among transition-age youth with system involvement, homelessness, and serious behavioral-health needs. This qualitative study examines why young people engage with or disengage from mental-health services. Findings highlight the importance of trusting relationships, practical assistance, youth choice, flexible services, and attention to housing, substance use, trauma, and previous negative experiences with institutions.
Anderson, J. K., et al. (2022). A systematic review of mental-health services for emerging adults. The review examines referrals, acceptance into adult services, service discontinuities, and barriers encountered when young people cross administratively defined age boundaries. It supports coordinated transition planning rather than abrupt discharge from youth services when a person reaches a particular birthday.
Housing First and Youth-Adapted Housing First Models
National Association of Social Workers. (2021). Code of ethics of the National Association of Social Workers: Standard 1.02, Self-Determination. Standard 1.02 addresses clients’ right to identify and pursue their own goals, subject to limited exceptions involving serious, foreseeable, and imminent risk.
Cross-reference: See Chapter 7 Youth for developmental and relational contexts; Chapter 12 Structural Racism for racial inequities in foster care, homelessness, education, employment, policing, and access to housing; and Chapter 6 Mental Health with Justice-Impacted Individuals for the relationship among housing instability, behavioral-health needs, criminalization, diversion, and reentry.
Further Resources
Suggested readings, research areas, and materials for extended learning.
Emerging Adulthood Theory
Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55(5), 469–480. Arnett proposed emerging adulthood as a developmental period concentrated roughly between ages 18 and 25 and characterized by identity exploration, instability, changing possibilities, increasing autonomy, and a subjective sense of being between adolescence and adulthood.
The theory should not be treated as a universal sequence. The availability of extended education, family financial support, safe housing, employment opportunities, and time for exploration is shaped by social class, culture, race, gender, disability, immigration status, family responsibilities, and public policy. Young people leaving foster care, detention, homelessness, or other systems may be expected to become economically independent more abruptly than their more privileged peers.
Foster-Care Aging-Out Outcomes
Dworsky, A., Napolitano, L., & Courtney, M. (2013). Homelessness during the transition from foster care to adulthood. American Journal of Public Health, 103(S2), S318–S323. This longitudinal study documents substantial risks of homelessness during the transition out of foster care and identifies factors associated with greater vulnerability. It supports beginning housing planning well before discharge rather than treating homelessness as an unexpected individual failure after care ends.
Fowler, P. J., Marcal, K. E., Zhang, J., Day, O., & Landsverk, J. (2017). Homelessness and aging out of foster care: A national comparison of child-welfare-involved adolescents. Children and Youth Services Review, 77, 27–33. Using national data, the study examines housing outcomes among adolescents who aged out of care compared with young people who exited through reunification, adoption, or guardianship. Aging out without permanent family connections was associated with greater housing vulnerability.
Administration for Children and Families. National Youth in Transition Database: Data and statistics. NYTD follows cohorts of young people with foster-care experience at ages 17, 19, and 21 and collects information concerning housing, education, employment, financial resources, health insurance, parenting, incarceration, and supportive adult relationships. It is a useful source for examining both national outcomes and differences among states.
Housing Instability and Mental Health
Roberts, M. K., et al. (2025). The long-term effects of housing insecurity in young adulthood on subsequent material hardship, physiological health, and mental health. Social Science & Medicine, 367, 117761. Using longitudinal Add Health data, the study found that housing insecurity between ages 18 and 26 was associated with later material hardship and worse depressive symptoms into adulthood. Some health effects were more pronounced among women.
Fowler, P. J., Henry, D. B., Schoeny, M., Taylor, J., & Chavira, D. (2015). Family and housing instability: Longitudinal effects on adolescent and young-adult functioning. Social Science Research, 56, 55–66. The study examines how repeated housing moves and family instability during adolescence are related to later educational, behavioral, and emotional outcomes. It supports treating housing stability as a component of mental-health prevention rather than merely as a referral need outside clinical practice.
Housing interventions should therefore be evaluated using more than shelter exit or lease-placement data. Relevant outcomes include sustained housing, safety, psychological distress, social connection, educational participation, employment, exposure to violence, service continuity, and young people’s own assessments of housing quality and choice.
Workforce-Development Program Evaluations
Miller, C., Cummings, D., Millenky, M., Wiegand, A., & Long, D. (2018). Laying a foundation: Four-year results from the National YouthBuild Evaluation. U.S. Department of Labor and MDRC. This randomized evaluation involved nearly 4,000 young people at 75 programs. YouthBuild increased receipt of high-school-equivalency credentials and initially increased college enrollment. Survey data indicated some employment and earnings gains, although administrative employment records did not show the same effect. Results concerning criminal-legal involvement and broader positive youth development were limited.
Skemer, M., Sherman, A., Williams, S., & Cummings, D. (2018). Forging a path: Final impacts and costs of New York City’s Young Adult Internship Program. MDRC. This randomized evaluation studied a program providing disconnected young people ages 16–24 with paid internships, job-readiness activities, case management, counseling, and follow-up services. It illustrates both the potential of paid work experiences to create short-term engagement and the difficulty of producing sustained education and employment gains after subsidized placements end.
Valentine, E. J., Anderson, C., Hossain, F., & Unterman, R. (2017). An introduction to the world of work: A study of the implementation and impacts of New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program. MDRC. The study used New York City’s randomized program lottery to evaluate outcomes among a very large group of applicants. The program substantially increased employment and earnings during the participating summer, while evidence of enduring labor-market effects was more limited.
Workforce programs should not be assessed solely by whether participants briefly obtain jobs. Strong evaluations also examine job quality, wages, predictable hours, credential attainment, retention, educational progress, transportation, housing, childcare, mentoring, workplace discrimination, and whether employers provide meaningful pathways for advancement.