Healthy Youth Program Project

GIRL TALK: Growing Into Responsible Leaders Talking About Love and Kinship

GIRL TALK is a federally-funded longitudinal study of African American mothers seeking outpatient mental health services. Study aims are to identify mother-daughter relationship factors, mother-daughter communication patterns (general and risk-specific), maternal attitudes and behavior, and girls’ peer and partner relationship characteristics that predict:

• sexual debut
• risky sexual behavior
• the effect of different types of psychopathology (internalizing, externalizing, substance using) on risk behavior among AA 12 – 16 year old girls in psychiatric care.