New vaccines are being targeted to help protect the adolescent population from disease. The Society for Adolescent Medicine strongly urges compliance with adolescent vaccination recommendations provided by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. These vaccines will significantly impact the health and well-being of the adolescent population. To enhance vaccination compliance and access...

Suicidality in adolescents being treated with antidepressant medications and the black box label: Position paper of the Society for Adolescent Medicine James Lock, M.D., Ph.D., Leslie R. Walker, M.D., FSAM, Vaughn I. Rickert, Psy.D., FSAM, and Debra K. Katzman, M.D., FSAM Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California Department of...

BACKGROUND Determining risky behaviours of adolescents provides valuable information for designing appropriate intervention programmes for advancing adolescent's health. However, these behaviours are not fully addressed by researchers in a comprehensive approach. We report the protocol of a mixed methods study designed to investigate the health risk behaviours of Moroccan adolescents with the g...

OBJECTIVE Adolescents sustaining traumatic brain injury (TBI) show increased prevalence of behavior problems. This study investigated the associations of parent mental health, family functioning, and parent-adolescent interaction with adolescent externalizing behavior problems in the initial months after TBI, and examined whether injury severity moderated these associations. METHODS 117 paren...

A careful examination of young men's sexuality by health professionals in pediatrics, primary care, and reproductive health is foundational to adolescent male sexual health and healthy development. Through a review of existing published data, this article provides background and a developmental framework for sexual health services for adolescent boys. The article first defines and provides an o...

Much has been learned in the past several decades about basic adolescent development and adolescent conditions, but much remains to be determined about the effect of biopsychosocial and environmental influences on health and disease. This new series on adolescent health and disease is timely as we learn more and impart this information to our readers. The first article illustrates the complexit...

BACKGROUND There is increasing recognition of the importance of providing quality healthcare to meet the biopsychosocial needs of young people. 'Developmentally appropriate healthcare' (DAH) for young people is one term used to explain what these services consist of. However, this term remains ill defined. AIMS (i) To analyse the use of the term DAH in the scientific literature and (ii) to id...

INTRODUCTION The aim of this study was to evaluate and describe the three-stage triage method used in a child and adolescent psychiatry outpatient clinic. METHOD The study investigated the new allocation process of 1482 children and adolescents who were assessed using this triage system for the duration of one year, in the year 2005. Data of 1423 children and adolescents who presented in 2003...