Adolescent Psychiatry

Adolescent psychiatry is the branch of psychiatry the focuses on diagnosing, treating, and preventing mental disorders in adolescents and their families. This branch concentrates on and investigates the biopsychosocial factors that effect adolescents (roughly between ages 12 and 25). This age group offers a particular challenge in that teenagers and young adults are dealing with massive physical and psychological changes during this time and some have great difficulty making the transitions and changes that are involved successfully. This field of psychiatry intensively studies hyperactivity and its management, the interaction of peer pressure and other social forces with preexisting depression, learning disabilities, and other conditions that are associated with childhood and adolescence.