Adolescent Health

The Four Quadrant Model is a proposed model for the clinical integration of mental wellness and behavioral well being services. A focus on the prevalence of co-occurring disorders (i.e. depression and alcoholism) is paramount in this model. The Four Quadrant Model builds on the 1998 consensus document for mental health and substance abuse/addiction service integration. This model for a comprehensive, continuous and integrated system of care describes differing levels of mental wellness and substance abuse integration and clinician competencies based on the four-quadrant model, divided into severity for each disorder:

&gt    Quadrant I: Low mental health – low substance abuse, served in primary care
&gt    Quadrant II: High mental well being – low substance abuse, served in the mental health system by staff who have substance abuse competency
&gt    Quadrant III: Low mental health – high substance abuse, served in the substance abuse program by staff who have mental health competency
&gt    Quadrant IV: High mental wellness – high substance abuse, served by a totally integrated mental well being and substance abuse program

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Are your youngsters growing up well? Are they healthy and strong or are they just growing vertically (and typically horizontally too)? What are your son’s or daughter’s diet plan requirements? Are they receiving adequate quantity of calories or are you worried they may well be gorging on the wrong sort of calories i.e. empty calories from sodas or overdoses of calories from junk foods?

As a parent you will most likely agree that your child’s diet is quite unpredictable. With out correct supervision our youngsters will probably avoid whole food groups and only consume what they really like i.e. carbohydrates and fats. It is a confirmed fact that weight and nutrition deficiencies, lack of energy, lack of concentration etc. can all be traced to faulty or imbalanced diet plan. The remedy to the problem is fairly straightforward – we require to take an active interest in our child’s diet plan, healthy food pyramid for kids as nicely as physical activity. Doing so will not only make adolescent weight management plans and fitness significantly easier to manage it will also bring about a sense of wellbeing amongst your youngsters.

Investigation is usually developed to study weight loss, despite the fact that adolescent well being specialists have long stressed the significance of focusing on all the positive aspects of weight loss management programs that lead to improved overall well being and well being.  Approaches designed to attain rapid weight loss by way of starvation, inappropriate strenuous physical exercise, and/or drugs can be harmful.

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By Alan Harper, MA, LLP

Many adults are surprised when told that children and adolescents can and do become clinically depressed. We often think only adults have the type and severity of life stressors that can result in depression. After all, we adults have to deal with careers, financial concerns, marital issues, parenting challenges, tax season, home repairs, health problems, and more. Children and adolescents have little to worry about in their relatively stress-free lives. Children simply have to do their best in their fun classes at school, play with their friends, enjoy all the toys they’ve accumulated, and put up with Mom and Dad when told it’s time to go to bed so they can rest up for another fun-filled, stress-free day.

Adolescent boys and girls have lives filled with Friday night football games, sleepovers at friends’ houses, weekends at the mall, movie dates with their exciting new boyfriend or girlfriend. They enjoy group outings at local fast food restaurants where talk is friendly and no one is teased or ostracized. Life is good as a child and adolescent. School is fun, home is stable, friends are true, and bodies are healthy. Depression can wait until the real stressors of adulthood. Right? Well…not exactly.

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Childhood obesity has been growing in recent decades at an alarming rate.  According to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Well being and National Institute of Aging (NIA), overweight kids and adolescents in the U.S. have been acquiring fatter over the last decade.

The researchers discovered in their study published in the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity that over time, U.S. children and adolescents had drastically increased measures of adiposity like body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and triceps skinfold thickness (TST).  These increases were even much more pronounced in black girls and other sex-ethnic groups.  The exact same groups gained much more abdominal fat over time, indicated by waist size.

Racial Disparities

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