Volume 25 of The Annals is a timely reprise on developmental, psychotherapeutic, and forensic issues that enter into the evaluation and treatment of adolescents. It traverses different explanatory perspectives, offers integrative expositions of several treatment modalities, and wrestles with the legal dimensions of adolescent care.

The volume begins with three developmental studies: Shelley Doctors’s clinically grounded reconsideration of “adolescent turmoil,” Charles Jaffe’s dynamic systems approach to adolescent psychotherapy, and Saul Levin’s thoughtful consideration of four aspects of the adolescent passage that clinicians tend to ignore: the adolescent’s sense of being, of belonging, of believing, and of benevolence. A thorough review of adolescent personality pathology and a case report of adolescent mourning are followed by a series of papers exploring three principal treatment modalities commonly employed in work with disturbed adolescents: psychodynamic, interpersonal, and the integrated approach of the Austen Riggs Center. Consideration of the game of chess as a “method and metaphor” for working with object relationships in narcissistic teenagers concludes the section of material on therapeutic approaches. The final section of volume 25 engages two knotty forensic issues that have come to the fore in adolescent psychiatry. Saul Levin examines the legal and developmental dimensions of the informed consent of minors whereas Everett Dulit outlines three clinical constellations associated with female adolescents’ denial of pregnancy and examines their relationship to neonaticide.

Like its distinguished predecessors, volume 25 is a thoughtfully assembled collection that not only spans the many facets of adolescent psychiatry but is responsive to the most pressing challenges – evaluative, therapeutic, legal – before the field.

Launched in 1971, Adolescent Psychiatry promised “to explore adolescence as a process . . . to enter challenging and exciting areas that may have profound effects on our basic concepts.” Further, they promised “a series that will provide a forum for the expression of ideas and problems that plague and excite so many of us working in this enigmatic but fascinating field.” The repository of a wealth of original studies by preeminent clinicians, developmental researchers, and social scientists specializing in this stage of life, the series has become an essential resource for all mental health practitioners working with youth.

Volume 24 of The Annals surveys four broad areas of adolescent psychiatry that speak to the challenges and opportunities now before the field. Part I offers three important reassessments of adolescent development; they focus, respectively, on separation-individuation theory, the interpersonal matrix of adolescence, and the psychology of belonging. Part II explores the future of child and adolescent psychiatry in the context of school-based mental health services. Several assessments of ongoing school-based mental health clinics provide the context for reflection on the future of school-based delivery systems. Part III examines forensic issues in adolescent psychiatry and includes an overview of forensic psychiatry for adolescent psychiatrists, an update on juvenile justice, and a review of the issue of competence in adolescents. Finally, Part IV offers a series of current perspectives on psychopharmacology in relation to adolescence. Contributors review the current status of pharmacological treatment of different adolescent populations, including adolescents with behavior disorders, affective disorders, anxiety disorders, pervasive developmental disorders, and psychosis. The volume concludes with a timely examination of the role of psychiatric consultation on an adolescent medical service.