Harry G. Pappas, a former top official of Meridian Healthcare Inc. and MBNA Corp., has been named chief financial officer of Youth Services International, an Owings Mills company that manages facilities for troubled youth.

"We are extremely pleased to have someone in the organization with Mr. Pappas' experience and qualifications," said W. James Hindman, chairman and chief executive officer of Youth Services. "His financial knowledge and discipline will be a great asset for the company and its shareholders."

Mr. Pappas, 47, was most recently chief financial officer of Meridian Healthcare, a Towson-based nursing home chain, from July 1993 to November 1993, when Meridian was acquired by Genesis Health Ventures Inc.

From February 1991 until he went to Meridian, he was vice chairman and director of MBNA America Bank N.A., a Newark, Del.-based credit card company, and also chief financial officer of its parent company, MBNA Corp.

He started his career in 1969 at the Baltimore office of the national accounting firm of Ernst & Ernst, later to become Ernst & Young, rising to the position of partner in 1980. He left the firm in 1985 to become executive vice president and chief financial officer of Equitable Bank Corp. in Baltimore.

He became executive vice president and chief financial officer of MNC Financial Inc., the parent company of Maryland National Bank, after it acquired Equitable in January 1990.