The Canada Foundation for Innovation is providing a $250,000 grant to develop a new Institute for the Reduction of Youth Violence at the Burnaby campus.

“Youth violence and other serious conduct problems pose significant social, public health, and economic problems in Canada and throughout the world,” says SFU clinical psychologist Robert McMahon, who will direct the institute.

Most of the research associated with youth conduct problems has been done in other countries, so the extent of the data’s applicability to Canada is unclear, especially given Canada’s multicultural population.

That’s why McMahon, the LEEF B.C. Leadership Chair in Proactive Approaches to Reducing Risk for Violence Among Children and Youth, says it’s important to conduct Canadian research.

“It will give us the enhanced ability to make informed decisions about the development of conduct problems in various Canadian populations. More importantly, it will assist us in developing, selecting and evaluating evidence-based interventions to reduce conduct problems in Canadian youth.”

There is a broad spectrum of conduct problems in youth, ranging from relatively minor oppositional behaviours like yelling or temper tantrums, to more serious forms of anti-social behaviour such as violence, aggression and destructiveness.

Although youth crime has declined in both rate and severity in Canada over the past decade, statistics show adolescents were charged with more than 100,000 criminal offences in 2011, including more than 40,000 violent crimes.

“This new institute at SFU will play a major role in furthering our understanding of the factors associated with youth violence and other serious behaviours,” says SFU VP Research Mario Pinto. “It also aligns perfectly with one of our strategic research plan’s key themes—culture, society and human behaviour.”