Adolescent Mental Health PDF

INTRODUCTION

Mental health illness often emerges during childhood and adolescence, and it accounts for a large portion of the global burden of disease among youth. These illnesses are often rooted in the community, making them a social worker's challenge, even while they are more commonly expected to be treated by the medical and counseling communities. In addition, mental health disorders interface with numerous other social and health problems; youth with mental illness are more likely to drop out of school, engage in high-risk behaviors, and sustain injuries from accidents.

Despite the high prevalence, there are many barriers for treatment, including lack of government policy, inadequate funding for services, and lack of trained clinicians. Protective factors have been well studied and include positive family attachment, educational attainment, positive role models, positive cultural experiences, and connectedness to the community.

This collection of scholarly articles gives the reader insight into the interface between mental health disease in adolescents with 1) their community, 2) their school, 3) their peers and families; it ends with a series of successful community interventions, with applications for the social worker, as well as educators, counselors, and medical clinicians. It is our sincere hope that the protective factors, risk factors, and interventions described here can also lead to policy development focused on prevention and early treatment.