Published: December 10, 2009
Depressed teens who report low levels of impairment related to drug or alcohol use tended to respond better to depression treatment than depressed teens with higher levels substance-related impairment, according to an analysis of data from the NIMH-funded Treatment of SSRI-Resistant Depression in Adolescents (TORDIA) study. However, it is unclear whether less substance-related impairment allowed for better response to depression treatment, or if better treatment response led to less substance-related impairment. The study was published in the December 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. [continue reading…]
Published: December 7, 2009
S ure looks good doesn’t he? Well now we have more reasons to admire “buff” teenage boys, in the first study to demonstrate a clear positive association between adolescent fitness and adult cognitive performance, Nancy Pedersen of the University of Southern California and colleagues in Sweden find that better cardiovascular health among teenage boys correlates to higher scores on a range of intelligence tests – and more education and income later in life. [continue reading…]
Published: November 18, 2009
From discovering how to help teens to grow up (in the previous post) we move on to find out more about teenagers brains. Parents have long suspected that the brains of their teenagers function differently than those of adults. With the advent of magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, we have begun to appreciate how the brain continues to develop structurally through adolescence and on into adulthood. High emotionality is a characteristic of adolescents and researchers are trying to understand how ‘emotional areas’ of the brain differ between adults and adolescents. [continue reading…]
Published: November 18, 2009
Parental nurturing is backfiring, and as a result a generation of teens is growing up less independent, less skilled at common tasks – from doing laundry to choosing college classes – and increasingly unprepared for adulthood, studies show.
Even young adults often are highly reliant on their parents; more than 60 percent of 23-year-olds and 30 percent of 25-year olds are still financially supported by their parents.
“We call it ‘the Nurture Paradox,'” University of Virginia clinical psychologists Joseph Allen and Claudia Worrell Allen write in their new book, “Escaping the Endless Adolescence: How to Help Our Teenagers Grow Up Before They Grow Old.” “Today’s parents are trying so hard to nurture their teens that they end up not preparing them for adulthood.” [continue reading…]
