Teenage Distress Questions Psychotherapists

Editorial

Abstract

A large number of clinical and epidemiological observations point to adolescence as the critical phase for an individual's mental health.
This is the period when the most severe psychiatric syndromes emerge and personality disorders become evident. Neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which had already manifested in childhood, persist in adolescence, however, manifesting new expressions and thus raising additional clinical issues. The most recent studies using brain imaging techniques have shown that massive readjustment processes of neuronal synapses occur during adolescence and that myelination of brain circuits in the prefrontal cortex is not complete until after the age of 20 years (Vitiello, 2017)