SOS: Stressed Out Students' Guide to Handling Peer Pressure

With a rise in recent years in the number of students seeking mental health services, an increase in cheating behavior in school, and constant concern from parents, teachers, and especially students about academic achievement, the time is now for a book series to address academic stress.

The SOS: Stressed Out Students books address a growing and often-overlooked crisis: adolescents struggle with stress, compromising their mental and physical health, personal values, and commitment to learning as they try to cope with growing pressure to achieve. In a survey released last year, 460 parents in California’s Santa Clara and San Mateo counties cited school-related stress among their top concerns for their children. Based upon real-life stories and tips from teachers, students and parents, each book in the SOS series addresses a topic of utmost concern to American teenagers.

SOS: Stressed Out Students' Guide to Handling Peer Pressure offers a life-line to students, parents, teachers, and counselors facing the enormous and unforeseen peer pressures that make up an important--if not the most important--part of teenage life. From cigarettes and sex to drugs and alcohol, the SOS guide will help students to cope with a society that often asks them to grow up too soon--and classmates who press them to keep with the pack.

Lisa Medoff holds a B.A in psychology from Rice University, an M.S.Ed.in school counseling from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. in child and adolescent development from Stanford University. For the past ten years, Lisa has been working with middle and high school students who have learning disabilities and emotional disorders. In this job, Lisa consults with both families and schools to help them provide the optimal school and home environments for their children with special needs. She has taught child & adolescent development and psychology courses to both undergraduates and teacher credential candidates at Stanford University, Santa Clara University and San Jose State University. Lisa works with the non-profit Cleo Eulau Center of Palo Alto, providing consulting services and teacher education workshops for elementary school teachers in a high-risk school district. She is also the author of a weekly child psychology column for the website Education.com.