While coping with teenage moodiness can be difficult under any circumstances, it can be especially challenging if a teenager has a serious mood disorder. Parents who have an adolescent struggling with depression now have a new resource to help them understand and get effective help for their child.
If Your Adolescent Has Depression: An Essential Resource for Parents combines the most current scientific expertise—including the newest treatments and medications and the latest research findings on depression—with insights and practical advice from parents whose children have faced this mood disorder.
The new book, published by Oxford University Press on May 30, was co-authored by Moira Rynn, MD, chair of the Duke University School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences; Dwight Evans, MD, a professor of psychiatry, medicine, and neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine (until his passing in 2022); and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Katherine Ellison.
Among other topics, the book addresses the roots of depression, red flags to look out for, treatment options for young people, and practical strategies for helping a teen cope at home and at school. It concludes on a hopeful note, by reviewing the latest scientific evidence on treating depression.
If Your Adolescent Has Depression also includes coverage of the effect of COVID-19 on depression and guidance for parents related to sex, drugs, social media, and life after high school.
“Seeing your child suffer from a behavioral health illness such as depression can be an extremely difficult and heart-wrenching experience for a parent, and it’s not uncommon for parents to feel a bit lost as they seek ways to support and find care for their child. We hope this book helps parents better understand what their child is going through and more easily navigate the path back to their child’s well-being.”
— Moira Rynn, MD
The book is part of a series published under Oxford University Press’s Adolescent Mental Health Initiative (AMHI). Launched in 2003 by the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, in conjunction with The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, the AMHI convened seven commissions of leading psychiatrists and psychologists to address what has now become a national crisis—teenage mental illness—and to assess the state of scientific research on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of specific disorders.
If Your Adolescent Has Depression is available on the publisher’s website.