Oxford University Press has published the third edition of the award-winning Treating and Preventing Adolescent Mental Health Disorders: What We Know and What We Don’t Know, a wide-ranging overview of the current state of knowledge of major mental health conditions that emerge during adolescence.
Sponsored by the Adolescent Mental Health Initiative, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania and The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, the updated third edition provides a significant expansion of the 2017 second edition, including the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and the latest research in gambling addiction, problematic internet use, and strategies to reduce the stigma of mental health conditions.
The book is available for purchase in hardcover and also as a free, downloadable PDF.
In this new edition, experts in adolescent mental health describe the characteristics and risks of anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, substance use, eating disorders, and suicidal behavior, and assess the available treatment and prevention strategies. The updated volume also reviews what we know about positive youth development, a strategy that can prepare adolescents not only to overcome disorders but also to lead fulfilling lives. In each case, the authors suggest a research agenda based on what we do and don’t yet know about these conditions and behaviors.
The book’s concluding chapters discuss overarching issues regarding the treatment and prevention of adolescent mental health disorders, including overcoming the stigma of mental illness, opportunities for delivering evidence-based treatments, and implications for placing the mental health of adolescents at the top of the policy agenda. Integrating the work of eminent scholars in the field of adolescent mental health, this work will serve as an essential resource for mental health professionals and policy makers alike about what will be needed to improve our nation’s response to promoting the well-being of adolescents.
“This comprehensive overview of mental health issues among youth underscores the importance of prevention, early intervention, and targeted treatment, all while addressing gaps in research and advocating for a positive approach to youth development,” writes co-editor Maria A. Oquendo, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the psychiatry department at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. “Addressing these challenges will require concerted efforts across multiple sectors, including healthcare education, and public policy, to improve mental health outcomes for current and future generations.”
In the book’s conclusion, co-editor Dan Romer, Ph.D., APPC’s research director, writes that “mental disorders in adolescents have increased along with the interruption of normal social life during the COVID-19 pandemic.” But he also notes the effects of a prior society-wide upheaval – the U.S financial crisis in 2008-2009, which led to a dramatic increase in financial insecurity, contributing to poor mental health affecting adolescents at the time and afterward. The lagged effects of increased child poverty experienced during the crisis continue to unfold with increases in youth suicide rates and rates of depression. In addition, there are many current societal changes that pose challenges to adolescents’ mental health, including reactions to the emergence of divergent sexual and gender identities, increases in excess weight and unhealthy eating, the threat of climate change, and exploitation by social media platforms.
While much of the discussion around the “mental health crisis in teens” focuses on the overuse of smartphones, adolescent suicide rates in other developed countries have declined in recent years. The United States “lacks a coherent youth development policy,” Romer says, unlike about half of the other OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) member countries. He adds, “A national strategy that coordinates treatment and prevention programs to support families will go a long way toward reducing the burden of poor mental and behavioral health in the United States both in youth and later, in adulthood.”
The new volume updates the work of seven commissions in different areas of adolescent mental health convened by the Adolescent Mental Health Initiative under project director Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, for the original volume in 2005. The first edition of “Treating and Preventing Adolescent Mental Health Disorders” received the 2005 Award for Excellence in Clinical Medicine from the Division of Professional/Scholarly Publishing of the Association of American Publishers.
Of the first edition, a reviewer wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association: “This volume is extraordinarily valuable in synthesizing a great deal of information based predominantly on such tightly controlled studies.” A New England Journal of Medicine reviewer said the book “provides an excellent evidence-based review of each of the topics and manages to weave in clinically important findings that help to keep the information both practical and tangible to the clinician. The review of the data on how to define each disorder, how to treat it, and how to prevent it makes the book one that must be read by anyone involved in the routine care of adolescents. It is a clear and well-written book that should provide an evidence-based approach to the thoughtful care of adolescents, and it should be a ready reference on the shelf of any physician caring for adolescents.”
In addition to Romer and Oquendo, the third edition’s editors are:
- Edna B. Foa, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
- Martin E. Franklin, Ph.D., Associate Professor Emeritus, Clinical Psychology in Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
- Raquel E. Gur, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Radiology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
- Kyle Kampman, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
- Christine Yu Moutier, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
- Moira Rynn, M.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University School of Medicine
- Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
- Robyn Sysko, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York
- B. Timothy Walsh, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University
Editing of the earlier editions was led by Dwight L. Evans, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, who passed away in 2022, as planning was underway for the current update. This edition is dedicated to him.
The 2005 edition of “Treating and Preventing Adolescent Mental Health Disorders” was digested, revised, and updated in a series of resource books on specific conditions for parents and young people that was superintended by Patrick E. Jamieson, director of APPC’s Annenberg Health and Risk Communication Institute. See the latest in the series, “If Your Adolescent Has Autism: An Essential Resource for Parents,” published in November 2025 by Oxford University Press. Earlier books in the series are dedicated to bipolar disorder, depression, eating disorders, ADHD, anxiety disorder, and schizophrenia and are available as free downloads from the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Learn more by clicking here.
“Treating and Preventing Adolescent Mental Health Disorders” is available for purchase in hardcover from Oxford and other booksellers, including Amazon, and as a free downloadable PDF. Download it from Oxford and from Google Books.
Treating and Preventing Adolescent Mental Health Disorders | Oxford University Press | December 2025 | Hardcover | $164.00 | ISBN: 9780197683705
The Annenberg Public Policy Center was established in 1993 to educate the public and policy makers about communication’s role in advancing public understanding of political, science, and health issues at the local, state, and federal levels.
