Table of Contents and Chapter Summaries
Part I: The Life of an Adolescent
Part II: Day-to-Day Problem Behaviors
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Part I: The Life of An Adolescent
What should you expect from your adolescent in terms of physical, emotional behavioral, cognitive, social, and moral maturation? This section focuses on the milestones of a teenager's development, providing parents with information about situations that almost every teenager experiences.
Chapter 1: Early and Middle Adolescence
At this time, friends become more important than parents and teens have a growing attraction to and interest in the opposite sex. Other topics addressed include dating, acne, menstruation, and autonomy.
Chapter 2: The High-School Years
This chapter discusses what parents can expect as the adolescent becomes more independent and enters adulthood. Topics addressed include talking about sex, independence and responsibility, and discipline and punishment.
Chapter 3: Leaving the Nest
Parents and teens face a major transition when youngsters leave home to begin life on their own. This chapter discusses how to handle issues related to identity, separation, and intimate relationships.
Back to Index
Part II: Day-to-Day Problem Behaviors
This section puts into context the everyday behaviors, feelings, and reactions teens exhibit that may be distressing to parents, but are perfectly normal parts of growing up. Also addressed are issues such as divorce, moving, death or serious illness in the family, experimenting with alcohol and drugs, and other challenges.
Chapter 4: Challenges at Home
On the home front, parents and adolescents experience difficulties in communicating, managing responsibility and being independent. These issues and more serious ones such as experimentation with drugs and alcohol, runaway teens, and date rape, among others, are addressed in this chapter.
Chapter 5: The Family Redefined
With the changing structure of today's family, countless youngsters are being raised by single parents, stepparents, grandparents, gay parents, and foster families. This chapter describes how issues such as adoption, sibling rivalry, and poverty affect a teen's relationships with the family.
Chapter 6: Schools-Related Concerns
School has a significant impact on a teen's life and plays an important role in building self-esteem and developing relationships with others. This chapter addresses motivation, homework, student-teacher conflicts, learning difficulties, school failure, and over- and underachievement.
Chapter 7: The Adolescent and the Community
Among the issues discussed in this chapter are antisocial and delinquent behavior, violence in the media, guns and adolescents, thrill-seeking behaviors, gangs, and homosexuality.
Chapter 8: The Adolescent With Chronic Illness
Families living with an adolescent who has a chronic illness such as diabetes, seizure disorders, cancer or other life-threatening disease, experience special challenges. This chapter addresses how families can cope with these special health concerns.
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Part III: Serious Problems and Abnormalities
Some emotional, behavioral, and developmental problems require professional intervention. The information provided will help parents recognize and understand these serious illnesses and their repercussions, and ask the questions that will get the appropriate help for their teen and the family.
Chapter 9: Emotional Disorders
This chapter explores some of the major emotional problems that teenagers experience, ways to evaluate their seriousness, and the need for professional help. Childhood trauma, depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder are addressed.
Chapter 10: Disruptive Behavior Disorders
Disturbed behaviors indicate a considerable degree of internal upset or represent a symptom of a larger, underlying emotional problem. Problems in school, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, and opposition defiant disorder are discussed.
Chapter 11: Developmental Disorders
This chapter focuses on recognizing and responding to mental retardation, learning disorders, language and speech disorders, pervasive developmental disorder, and Asperger's Disorder.
Chapter 12: Eating and Nutritional Disorders
A teenager with an eating disorder does not use food in a healthy way to satisfy hunger. This chapter explains anorexia nervosa, a serious and potentially-life threatening disorder, as well as bulimia nervosa and obesity.
Chapter 13: Psychotic Disorders
Psychotic disorders, also referred to as thought disorders, are among the most serious of mental disorders, and serious impair an adolescent's ability to function in reality. This chapter explains schizophrenia, psychosis due to mood disorders, brief reactive psychosis, and toxic psychosis, and provides suggestions for treatment.
Chapter 14: Substance Abuse Disorders
Why do teens drink or take drugs? While many just experiment, some go on to regular and dangerous abuse. This chapter examines the risk factors that may make a teen more prone to substance abuse, signs and symptoms of substance abuse, and treatment.
Chapter 15: Sleep Disorders
While sleep problems may signal only mild, passing problems, they may also represent more persistent, troublesome ones. This chapter explores some of the most common sleep problems that occur in adolescence, which include narcolepsy, circadian rhythm sleep disorder (delayed sleep phase), nightmares, and sleepwalking.
Back to Index
Part IV. Seeking Help
This section offers resources and advice for professional mental health treatment. It discusses the role of the child and adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and other professionals, and individual psychotherapy, medication, family and group therapies, and other types of treatment.
Chapter 16: When and Where to Seek Help
Direction and assistance to help parents understand what is involved in seeking help, what mental health intervention can reasonably be expected to accomplish, and how to find the right clinician for the teen and family.
Chapter 17: What Are the Treatment Options
A detailed discussion of the fundamentals of choosing and using mental health services, specifically focusing on the various types of therapies available and the issues and problems each typically addresses.
Back to Index
Part I: The Life of an Adolescent
Part II: Day-to-Day Problem Behaviors
- Challenges at Home
- The Family Redefined
- School-Related Concerns
- The Adolescent and the Community
- The Adolescent With Chronic Illness
- Emotional Disorders
- Disruptive Behavior Disorders
- Developmental Disorders
- Eating and Nutritional Disorders
- Psychotic Disorders
- Substance Abuse Disorders
- Sleep Disorders
Back to Index
Part I: The Life of An Adolescent
What should you expect from your adolescent in terms of physical, emotional behavioral, cognitive, social, and moral maturation? This section focuses on the milestones of a teenager's development, providing parents with information about situations that almost every teenager experiences.
Chapter 1: Early and Middle Adolescence
At this time, friends become more important than parents and teens have a growing attraction to and interest in the opposite sex. Other topics addressed include dating, acne, menstruation, and autonomy.
Chapter 2: The High-School Years
This chapter discusses what parents can expect as the adolescent becomes more independent and enters adulthood. Topics addressed include talking about sex, independence and responsibility, and discipline and punishment.
Chapter 3: Leaving the Nest
Parents and teens face a major transition when youngsters leave home to begin life on their own. This chapter discusses how to handle issues related to identity, separation, and intimate relationships.
Back to Index
Part II: Day-to-Day Problem Behaviors
This section puts into context the everyday behaviors, feelings, and reactions teens exhibit that may be distressing to parents, but are perfectly normal parts of growing up. Also addressed are issues such as divorce, moving, death or serious illness in the family, experimenting with alcohol and drugs, and other challenges.
Chapter 4: Challenges at Home
On the home front, parents and adolescents experience difficulties in communicating, managing responsibility and being independent. These issues and more serious ones such as experimentation with drugs and alcohol, runaway teens, and date rape, among others, are addressed in this chapter.
Chapter 5: The Family Redefined
With the changing structure of today's family, countless youngsters are being raised by single parents, stepparents, grandparents, gay parents, and foster families. This chapter describes how issues such as adoption, sibling rivalry, and poverty affect a teen's relationships with the family.
Chapter 6: Schools-Related Concerns
School has a significant impact on a teen's life and plays an important role in building self-esteem and developing relationships with others. This chapter addresses motivation, homework, student-teacher conflicts, learning difficulties, school failure, and over- and underachievement.
Chapter 7: The Adolescent and the Community
Among the issues discussed in this chapter are antisocial and delinquent behavior, violence in the media, guns and adolescents, thrill-seeking behaviors, gangs, and homosexuality.
Chapter 8: The Adolescent With Chronic Illness
Families living with an adolescent who has a chronic illness such as diabetes, seizure disorders, cancer or other life-threatening disease, experience special challenges. This chapter addresses how families can cope with these special health concerns.
Back to Index
Part III: Serious Problems and Abnormalities
Some emotional, behavioral, and developmental problems require professional intervention. The information provided will help parents recognize and understand these serious illnesses and their repercussions, and ask the questions that will get the appropriate help for their teen and the family.
Chapter 9: Emotional Disorders
This chapter explores some of the major emotional problems that teenagers experience, ways to evaluate their seriousness, and the need for professional help. Childhood trauma, depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder are addressed.
Chapter 10: Disruptive Behavior Disorders
Disturbed behaviors indicate a considerable degree of internal upset or represent a symptom of a larger, underlying emotional problem. Problems in school, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, and opposition defiant disorder are discussed.
Chapter 11: Developmental Disorders
This chapter focuses on recognizing and responding to mental retardation, learning disorders, language and speech disorders, pervasive developmental disorder, and Asperger's Disorder.
Chapter 12: Eating and Nutritional Disorders
A teenager with an eating disorder does not use food in a healthy way to satisfy hunger. This chapter explains anorexia nervosa, a serious and potentially-life threatening disorder, as well as bulimia nervosa and obesity.
Chapter 13: Psychotic Disorders
Psychotic disorders, also referred to as thought disorders, are among the most serious of mental disorders, and serious impair an adolescent's ability to function in reality. This chapter explains schizophrenia, psychosis due to mood disorders, brief reactive psychosis, and toxic psychosis, and provides suggestions for treatment.
Chapter 14: Substance Abuse Disorders
Why do teens drink or take drugs? While many just experiment, some go on to regular and dangerous abuse. This chapter examines the risk factors that may make a teen more prone to substance abuse, signs and symptoms of substance abuse, and treatment.
Chapter 15: Sleep Disorders
While sleep problems may signal only mild, passing problems, they may also represent more persistent, troublesome ones. This chapter explores some of the most common sleep problems that occur in adolescence, which include narcolepsy, circadian rhythm sleep disorder (delayed sleep phase), nightmares, and sleepwalking.
Back to Index
Part IV. Seeking Help
This section offers resources and advice for professional mental health treatment. It discusses the role of the child and adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and other professionals, and individual psychotherapy, medication, family and group therapies, and other types of treatment.
Chapter 16: When and Where to Seek Help
Direction and assistance to help parents understand what is involved in seeking help, what mental health intervention can reasonably be expected to accomplish, and how to find the right clinician for the teen and family.
Chapter 17: What Are the Treatment Options
A detailed discussion of the fundamentals of choosing and using mental health services, specifically focusing on the various types of therapies available and the issues and problems each typically addresses.
Back to Index
