Adolescent Mental Health

Why America's sons are underachieving, and what we can do about it. Something is happening to boys today. From kindergarten to college, American boys are, on average, less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere 20 years ago. The gender gap in college attendance and graduation rates has widened dramatically. In Boys Adrift, Dr. Leonard Sax delves into the scientific literature and draws on more than 20 years of clinical experience to explain why boys and young men are failing in school and disengaged at home.

What are teens actually doing on their smartphones? Contrary to many adults’ assumptions, they are not simply “addicted” to their screens, oblivious to the afterlife of what they post, or missing out on personal connection. They are just trying to navigate a networked world. In Behind Their Screens, Emily Weinstein and Carrie James, Harvard researchers who are experts on teens and technology, explore the complexities that teens face in their digital lives, and suggest that many adult efforts to help—“Get off your phone!” “Just don’t sext!”—fall short.

Supporting the mental health and well-being of children and young people is a top priority for parents, caregivers, and teachers, but it can be tricky to find reliable and evidence-based information. Written by an experienced child and adolescent psychiatrist, in a user-friendly question-and-answer format, this book outlines the mental health challenges facing our children and young people and offers practical advice on how to best support them.

Healing Self-Injury provides desperately-needed guidance to parents and others who love a young person struggling with self-injury. First and foremost, adolescent psychologists Janis Whitlock and Elizabeth Lloyd-Richardson believe that parents must appreciate how important their role is in their child's recovery; there is a lot that parents can do to support their self-injuring children. This book is a must-have for parents who want to assist in their child's recovery, as well as for anyone who lives with, works with, or cares about self-injuring youth and their families.

For almost 30 years, Susan Burton hid her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret.

Between the ages of twelve and twenty-four, the brain changes in important and, at times, challenging ways. In Brainstorm, the renowned psychiatrist and bestselling author of Parenting from the Inside Out, The Whole-Brain Child, and Mindsight, Daniel Siegel busts a number of commonly held myths about adolescence — for example, that it is merely a stage of “immaturity” filled with often “crazy” behavior — to reveal how it is in fact a vital time in our lives in terms of charting the course for the adults we ultimately become.

Michele Borba has been a teacher, educational consultant, and parent for 40 years - and she's never been more worried than she is about this current generation of kids. The high-achieving students she talks with every day are more accomplished, better educated, and more privileged than ever before. They're also more stressed, unhappier, and struggling with anxiety, depression, and burnout at younger and younger ages - "we're like pretty packages with nothing inside," said one young teen.

Your past holds power over your present. Childhood experiences shape your beliefs, actions, and relationships more than you realize. Do you struggle with self-doubt, insecurity, or uncontrollable emotions? These are echoes of unresolved childhood trauma, staining your adult life like unseen residue on a canvas. But there's hope. This book offers a compassionate approach to healing your inner child while equipping you with practical tools for emotional growth.

Why are certain people so incredibly great at what they do? Most of us think we know the answer - but we’re almost always wrong. That’s important, because if we’re wrong on this crucial question, then we have zero chance of getting significantly better at anything we care about. Happily, the real source of great performance is no longer a mystery. Bringing together extensive scientific research, best-selling author Geoff Colvin shows where we go wrong and what actually makes world-class performers so remarkable.

She met far too many ADHD adolescents in Young Offender Institutes when she was a Prison Counsellor, and, without exception, none of them had had strong parental support. A lot of them had had no support whatsoever, and certainly nobody understanding their ADHD brain. So for mostly very silly, minor misdemeanours they had ended up behind bars. Sarah then went into private practice counselling ADHD teenagers, all of whom she bonded with instantly. For one very simple reason. She had the same brain as them - she ‘got’ them.

Written in Shipp's playfully authoritative, no-nonsense voice, The Grown-Up's Guide to Teenage Humans tells his story and unpacks practical strategies that can make a difference. Ultimately, it's not about shortcuts or magic words - as Shipp reminds us, it's about investing in kids and giving them the love, time, and support they need to thrive. And that means every kid is one caring adult away from being a success story.

The comprehensive guide explains what BPD is and what a patient's treatment options are, including an overview of the revolutionary new treatment called dialectic behavior therapy. Author Blaise A. Aguirre, M.D., one of the foremost experts in the field, describes recent advances in treatments and brings into focus what we know, and don't know, about this condition.

If you're a parent of one of the more than one million children in this country with obsessive-compulsive disorder, you know how confusing, even frightening, the symptoms of OCD can be. You're terrified of losing your child and angry about the havoc this disorder has wreaked. More than anything, you want to be able to unlock the secrets of OCD, understand the cause, and help your child break free. In this book, Dr. Tamar E. Chansky creates a clear road map to understanding and overcoming OCD based on her successful practice treating hundreds of children and teenagers with this disorder.

Have you ever felt like sleeping is a better option compared to waking up and facing the day? These signs might actually indicate a serious underlying problem. We need to know how our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors interact especially in the case of conditions such as depression, anger, anxiety, phobia, and panic. This book is designed to help children, teenagers, and young adults understand their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

In 1994, Reviving Ophelia was published, and it shone a much-needed spotlight on the problems faced by adolescent girls. The approach Pipher and Gilliam take in this new edition is just what it was in the original: a timely, listenable combination of insightful research and real-world examples that illuminate the challenges young women face and the ways to address them. This updated Reviving Ophelia looks at 21st century adolescent girls through fresh eyes, with insights and ideas that will help new generations of listeners.

Featuring a wealth of clinical examples, this audiobook facilitates implementation of Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) in a range of contexts. It demonstrates how assessment strategies and treatment components can be tailored to optimally serve clients' needs while maintaining overall fidelity to the TF-CBT model. Coverage includes ways to overcome barriers to implementation in residential settings, foster placements, and low-resource countries.

Between social media, constant connection, and addictive tech and smartphones, the boundaries of privacy are stretched thin. We can track our kids’ every move with apps, see their grades within minutes of being posted, and fixate on their digital footprint, anxious that a misstep could cause them to be “canceled” or even jeopardize their admission to college. All of this adds pressure on kids, particularly Gen Z. Growing Up in Public shows us that by focusing on character, rather than the threat of getting caught or exposed, we can support our kids to be authentically themselves.

Delve into the complexities of youth mental health. This comprehensive book covers the spectrum from neuropsychological development nuances to cutting-edge treatments for anxiety and depression in young people. Gain a deep understanding of the theoretical and practical foundations of child and adolescent psychiatry, presented in an accessible and engaging manner.

Parents will gain insight into how to transform their parenting to help middle schoolers find greater independence, connect well with peers, and have the deepest learning possible in and out of school. Educators will learn about the developmental keys to making middle school a place of belonging, with deep social and emotional learning and academics that draw out students' full motivation and potential.

Anyone caring for girls today knows that our daughters, students, and girls next door are more anxious and more prone to depression and self-harming than ever before. The question that no one has yet been able to credibly answer is Why? Now we have answers. As award-winning writer Donna Jackson Nakazawa deftly explains in Girls on the Brink, new findings reveal that the crisis facing today’s girls is a biologically rooted phenomenon: the earlier onset of puberty mixes badly with the unchecked bloom of social media and cultural misogyny.