At first glance, treatment of the young adult seems comparatively easy: their metabolisms have slowed to the normal adult pace, most medications are FDA approved, and they (finally) tend to present with symptoms of just one or two diagnoses at a time. However, nature gets in the way, and the normal developmental tasks of transitional age youth (TAY) make the situation much, much harder than merely writing the prescription.

Of 2.4 million students who went to college in 1993, 1.5 million never made it past their first year and 1.1 million never went on to get a degree. Dr. Alvarez discusses how to beat the odds and help kids stay in college; especially those with serious mental illness.

Dr. Davis talks about developing interventions that assist young people with serious mental health conditions to succeed in schooling, training, and their early launch into adult work lives during the transition to adulthood.

It’s been a growing trend for quite some time now for teens to abuse prescription drugs such as pain relievers and stimulants for recreational use.

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Rating scales have been gaining favor in diagnostic assessment of children with psychiatric and/or neurodevelopmental disorders. While they have their benefits, misuse or overreliance on rating scales can interfere with the assessment process and lead to misdiagnoses, inappropriate interventions, and poor outcomes.

A comprehensive table of selected diagnostic and rating scales.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends healthcare providers routinely screen all adolescents for alcohol use and related problems. But how can clinicians easily and effectively determine if adolescent patients have a problem with alcohol?

A study by Korean researchers shows that female adolescents with ADHD have a significantly higher intake of trans fatty acids (TFA) than those without the disorder.

Recently, researchers in the field of conduct disorder (CD) have proposed including a specifier to the diagnosis of CD in DSM-5 based on the presence of callous-unemotional (CU) traits.