Young adults face health challenges that are vastly different from those of previous generations. While their parents benefited from new vaccines, antibiotics, and other medications, today's teens are learning that lifestyle choices also play a central role in health maintenance. The decisions they make and the habits they adopt form the foundation for lifelong wellness. Omnigraphics' Teen Health Series is a specially focused set of volumes within the highly acclaimed Health Reference Series. Each volume deals comprehensively with a topic selected according to the needs and interests of people in middle school and high school. While many young people recognize that physical fitness is important for maintaining a healthy body, the importance of mental fitness for maintaining a healthy mind and emotions is sometimes overlooked. Statistics suggest that nearly one out of every five teens struggles with a mental health concern, and one in ten suffers from a mental disorder severe enough to cause some level of impairment, including poor academic performance, loss of friends, family conflict, faulty body image, and difficulty making decisions. Compounding the problem is that fact that many young people experience a long delay-sometimes decades-between the onset of their symptoms and when they eventually seek treatment. Mental Health Information for Teens, Third Edition offers updated information about maintaining mental wellness and coping with a host of problems that commonly occur during the adolescent years, including self-esteem issues, stress overload, family problems, heartbreak, and grief. It describes the warning signs that may accompany mental health disorders such as depresion, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, phobias, behavioral disorders, personality disorders, psychoses, and schizophrenia. It also discusses the types of treatment most commonly used by mental health professionals. Facts about alternative approaches to mental health care are included, and the book concludes with directories of resources for help and support and suggestions for additional reading. Book jacket.

Young adulthood - ages approximately 18 to 26 - is a critical period of development with long-lasting implications for a person's economic security, health and well-being. Young adults are key contributors to the nation's workforce and military services and, since many are parents, to the healthy development of the next generation. Although 'millennials' have received attention in the popular media in recent years, young adults are too rarely treated as a distinct population in policy, programs, and research. Instead, they are often grouped with adolescents or, more often, with all adults. Currently, the nation is experiencing economic restructuring, widening inequality, a rapidly rising ratio of older adults, and an increasingly diverse population. The possible transformative effects of these features make focus on young adults especially important. A systematic approach to understanding and responding to the unique circumstances and needs of today's young adults can help to pave the way to a more productive and equitable tomorrow for young adults in particular and our society at large. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults describes what is meant by the term young adulthood, who young adults are, what they are doing, and what they need. This study recommends actions that nonprofit programs and federal, state, and local agencies can take to help young adults make a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood. According to this report, young adults should be considered as a separate group from adolescents and older adults. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults makes the case that increased efforts to improve high school and college graduate rates and education and workforce development systems that are more closely tied to high-demand economic sectors will help this age group achieve greater opportunity and success. The report also discusses the health status of young adults and makes recommendations to develop evidence-based practices for young adults for medical and behavioral health, including preventions. What happens during the young adult years has profound implications for the rest of the life course, and the stability and progress of society at large depends on how any cohort of young adults fares as a whole. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults will provide a roadmap to improving outcomes for this age group as they transition from adolescence to adulthood.

Adolescence is a time of major transition, however, health care services in the United States today are not designed to help young people develop healthy routines, behaviors, and relationships that they can carry into their adult lives. While most adolescents at this stage of life are thriving, many of them have difficulty gaining access to necessary services; other engage in risky behaviors that can jeopardize their health during these formative years and also contribute to poor health outcomes in adulthood. Missed opportunities for disease prevention and health promotion are two major problematic features of our nation's health services system for adolescents. Recognizing that health care providers play an important role in fostering healthy behaviors among adolescents, Adolescent Health Services examines the health status of adolescents and reviews the separate and uncoordinated programs and services delivered in multiple public and private health care settings. The book provides guidance to administrators in public and private health care agencies, health care workers, guidance counselors, parents, school administrators, and policy makers on investing in, strengthening, and improving an integrated health system for adolescents.

Technology and Adolescent Health: In Schools and Beyond discusses how today's adolescents are digital natives, using technology at home and in school to access information, for entertainment, to socialize and do schoolwork. This book summarizes research on how technology use impacts adolescent mental health, sleep, physical activity and eating habits. In addition, it identifies monitoring and screening technology-based tools for use with adolescents.

Adolescenceâ€"beginning with the onset of puberty and ending in the mid-20sâ€"is a critical period of development during which key areas of the brain mature and develop. These changes in brain structure, function, and connectivity mark adolescence as a period of opportunity to discover new vistas, to form relationships with peers and adults, and to explore one's developing identity. It is also a period of resilience that can ameliorate childhood setbacks and set the stage for a thriving trajectory over the life course. Because adolescents comprise nearly one-fourth of the entire U.S. population, the nation needs policies and practices that will better leverage these developmental opportunities to harness the promise of adolescenceâ€"rather than focusing myopically on containing its risks. This report examines the neurobiological and socio-behavioral science of adolescent development and outlines how this knowledge can be applied, both to promote adolescent well-being, resilience, and development, and to rectify structural barriers and inequalities in opportunity, enabling all adolescents to flourish.

Offers mental health information for teens including facts about anxiety, depression, suicide, panic attacks, and more.

Including Facts about Puberty, Reproductive Health, Chlamydia, Human Papillomavirus, Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, Herpes, AIDS, Contraception, Pregnancy, and More.

Children's health has clearly improved over the past several decades. Significant and positive gains have been made in lowering rates of infant mortality and morbidity from infectious diseases and accidental causes, improved access to health care, and reduction in the effects of environmental contaminants such as lead. Yet major questions still remain about how to assess the status of children's health, what factors should be monitored, and the appropriate measurement tools that should be used. Children's Health, the Nation's Wealth: Assessing and Improving Child Health provides a detailed examination of the information about children's health that is needed to help policy makers and program providers at the federal, state, and local levels. In order to improve children's health-and, thus, the health of future generations-it is critical to have data that can be used to assess both current conditions and possible future threats to children's health. This compelling book describes what is known about the health of children and what is needed to expand the knowledge. By strategically improving the health of children, we ensure healthier future generations to come.

Adolescents undergo rapid physical, psychological and social developmental changes that result in management challenges, communication issues, patterns of disease and symptom presentations that are different from children or adults. This can be challenging for health professionals, who rarely have had specific training in dealing with the young people they meet in their clinical work. This ABC covers topics surrounding adolescent development, sexual behaviour and substance misuse, along with education and preventative strategies. It also features other adolescent health problems such as self-harm, eating disorders and psychosomatic presentations. This book is a valuable resource for all those who deal with adolescent patients in primary care, emergency departments, and hospital and outpatient settings.

Over the course of the last two decades, improved practices in child and adolescent mental healthcare have led to a decreased environment of stigma, which also led to an increased identification and treatment of mental health disorders in children and youth. Considering that treatment and outcomes are improved with early intervention, this is good news. However, the success gained in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry leads to a new challenge: transitioning from adolescent care to adult care. It has been known for some time that children, adult, and geriatric patients all have unique needs where it comes to mental healthcare, yet limited work has been done where it comes to the shifting of the lifespan. Where it comes to the child-adult transition—defined as those in their late teens and early/mid-20s—there can be multiple barriers in seeking mental healthcare that stem from age-appropriate developmental approaches as well as include systems of care needs. Apart from increasing childhood intervention, the problem is exacerbated by the changing social dynamics: more youths are attending college rather than diving straight into the workforce, but for various reasons these youths can be more dependent on their parents more than previous generations. Technology has improved the daily lives of many, but it has also created a new layer of complications in the mental health world. The quality and amount of access to care between those with a certain level of privilege and those who do not have this privilege is sharp, creating more complicating factors for people in this age range. Such societal change has unfolded so rapidly that training programs have not had an opportunity to catch up, which has created a crisis for care. Efforts to modernize the approach to this unique age group are still young, and so no resource exists for any clinicians at any phase in their career. This book aims to serve as the first concise guide to fill this gap in the literature. The book will be edited by two leading figures in transition age youth, both of whom are at institutions that have been at the forefront of this clinical work and research. This proposed mid-sized guide is therefore intended to be a collaborative effort, written primarily by child and adolescent psychiatrists, and also with adult psychiatrists. The aim is to discuss the developmental presentation of many common mental health diagnoses and topics in chapters, with each chapter containing clinically-relevant “bullet points” and/or salient features that receiving providers, who are generally, adult-trained, should keep in mind when continuing mental health treatment from the child and adolescent system. Chapters will cover a wide range of challenges that are unique to transition-age youths, including their unique developmental needs, anxiety, mood, and personality disorders at the interface of this development, trauma and adjustment disorders, special populations, and a wide range of other topics. Each chapter will begin with a clinical pearl about each topic before delving into the specifics.