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Group interpersonal therapy reduces depression in adolescent survivors of war
Source: Evidence-Based Mental Health

Group interpersonal therapy, but not creative play, reduces depression symptoms in adolescent survivors of war and displacement in northern Uganda. Group interpersonal therapy may be more effective for girls than boys.

How Risky Are Social Networking Sites? A Comparison of Places Online Where Youth Sexual Solicitation and Harassment Occurs
Source: Pediatrics

Broad claims of victimization risk, at least defined as unwanted sexual solicitation or harassment, associated with social networking sites do not seem justified. Prevention efforts may have a greater impact if they focus on the psychosocial problems of youth instead of a specific Internet application, including funding for online youth outreach programs, school antibullying programs, and online mental health services.

Personality factors as predictors of persistent risky driving behavior and crash involvement among young adults
Source: Injury Prevention

Key points

• There is a higher incidence of persistent risky driving behaviors in young adult males than in young adult females.
• Personality characteristics are associated with persistent risky driving behaviors, and their potential outcomes, in young adult males.
• For males, high levels of aggression are associated with being a driver involved in a crash.
• High levels of alienation and low levels of traditionalism are associated with being a driver involved in an injury crash in young adult males.

Family Breakup and Adolescents’ Psychosocial Maladjustment: Public Health Implications of Family Disruptions
Source: Pediatrics

Preventing psychosocial maladjustment in adolescents requires a better knowledge of the transformations that the traditional family model is presently undergoing. Parental separation triggers a process of grieving and a period of reorganization of family relationships. During this period, where feelings and painful emotions are exacerbated, practitioners can play a role. By supporting adolescents, a major task is the integration of these emotions over time and the reinforcement of children’s self-esteem, which is lowered in the case of family dissolution. In addition, family relationships have to be renegotiated to redefine family boundaries, where legitimacy of both parents is to be recognized by adolescents. This process of renegotiation must be explained to the parents. Indeed, the clarity and the security of the relationships in a separated family ensure the necessary cohesion on which the adolescent’s identity builds. Helping this task means supporting interindividual communication in the separated family to redefine the roles of its members. For the parents, this redefinition makes it possible to disentangle the marital role, a major source of interparental conflicts, and the parental role. The ultimate goal is reestablishing the balance between love and authority of both parents for their children. More broadly, the impact of psychosocial maladjustment on the well-being of children and later on their psychosocial integration during young adulthood warrants 2 other sets of interventions: legal interventions aimed also at reinforcing family relationships (divorce mediation or joint custody) and social interventions for enhancing social support for children and their families and for increasing financial resources through public policies.

Learning from Adolescents to Prevent HIV and Unintended Pregnancy (PDF; 418 KB)
Source: The Guttmacher Institute
From press release:

To help adolescents in developing countries protect themselves from HIV and unintended pregnancy, policymakers in the United States and abroad must acknowledge the role that sexuality plays in the lives of young people, according to the policy recommendations drawn from a major new Guttmacher Institute study in Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to an overall strengthening of education and health systems, a key focus of national government efforts should be on providing high-quality, age-appropriate sex education. To be most effective, sex education in schools should reach adolescents before they begin to have sex. Because not all adolescents stay in school, sex education should begin in early primary grades.

Links between juvenile sexually abusive behaviour and emerging severe personality disorder traits in childhood (PDF; 1.13 MB)
Source: Department of Health, Home Office, and National Offender Management Service (UK)

See also: The needs and effective treatment of young people who sexually abuse: current evidence (PDF; 374 KB)