Customer Reviews

Treating and Preventing Adolescent Mental Health Disorders: What We Know and What We Don't Know: A Research Agenda for Improving the Mental Health of Our Youth

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This hardbound tome (818 pages total) is an invaluable reference for the mental health professional who works with adolescents. It was a an impressive project , the Adolescent Mental Health Initiative, sponsored by the Annenberg Foundation and the Annenberg Public Policy Center that addressed what is known about mental health disorders in the adolescent years. Six commissions with distinguished scholars contributed their expertise on adolescent depression and bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, substance abuse disorders and youth suicide. Each section is clear and thorough conceptually and also provides various treatment modalities and prevention strategies. There are also helpful graphs and charts incorporated throughout. This book has current research, lucid summaries and conclusions. In addition to the main focus of mental illness, this book includes the important work of the seventh commission---Beyond Disorder, the positive perspective on youth development which deals with how we can help our youth prepare to lead happy successful lives. The final chapters deal with the stigma of mental illness, the role of primary care doctors and the role of the front-line people who deal with adolescents: school-based mental health professionals. This work is valuable not only for the scholars, the clinicians and the parents of adolescents but the policy makers who make the decisions affecting the lives of our youth.

A must have for anyone in the Mental Health field who works with adolescents. Valuable information to aid in diagnosis and treatment.