Adolescents At Risk: Medical And Social Perspectives

This book seeks to deal constructively and prescriptively with what is known about the factors that cause teenage violence, risky sexual behavior (including risk of AIDS), and alcohol and drug abuse. It also addresses the guidelines that should be followed by those who seek to reduce societal costs resulting from the dysfunctional behavior of young people unable to make the transition from adolescence to young adulthood without special assistance and support.
A high proportion of the seven million young adults in the United States fall into this category. Many of them - whether they seek and receive assistance or do neither - will be marginalized by society because they lack education and skills. Still others will never reach their mid-twenties, for they will be victims of either homicide or suicide or will die prematurely of AIDS or as a consequence of drug addiction.
Tragically, the problems of adolescents, although putatively of crucial importance, appear to have little power to influence the politics of the day. Politics is beyond the purview of this book, but the policy and health issues discussed here by major practitioners and scholars will be of profound interest to those policymakers and other professionals who must deal with them on a daily basis, though with inadequate funds and support.