Importance of investing in adolescence from a developmental science perspective.

This review summarizes the case for investing in adolescence as a period of rapid growth, learning, adaptation, and formational neurobiological development. Adolescence is a dynamic maturational period during which young lives can pivot rapidly-in both negative and positive directions. Scientific progress in understanding adolescent development provides actionable insights into windows of opportunity during which policies can have a positive impact on developmental trajectories relating to health, education, and social and economic success. Given current global changes and challenges that affect adolescents, there is a compelling need to leverage these advances in developmental science to inform strategic investments in adolescent health.

Multiple dimensions of peer influence in adolescent romantic and sexual relationships: a descriptive, qualitative perspective.

Adolescents undergo critical developmental transformations that increase the salience of peer influence. Peer interactions (platonic and romantic) have been found to have both a positive and negative influence on adolescent attitudes and behaviors related to romantic relationships and sexual behavior. This study used qualitative methodology to explore how peers influence romantic and sexual behavior. Forty adolescents participated in individual semi-structured interviews. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed, and analyzed using a modified grounded theory approach. The concept of peer influence on romantic relationships and sexual behavior emerged as a key theme. Youth described that platonic peers (friends) influenced their relationships and sexual behavior including pressuring friends into relationships, establishing relationships as currency for popularity and social status, and creating relationship norm and expectations. Romantic peers also motivated relationship and sexual behavior as youth described engaging in behavior to avoid hurting and successfully pleasing their partners. Future research should explore multiple types of peer influence in order to better inform interventions to improve the quality of adolescents' romantic and sexual relationships.

Internalizing the COVID-19 pandemic: Gendered differences in youth mental health.

We review research on gendered patterns of internalizing behaviors in adolescents and emerging adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that young women reported worse mental health than young men. Transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) youth are underrepresented in mental health research but often report the highest internalizing disorders of any gender group. Finally, we use intersectionality as a lens to acknowledge how gender and other social identities (e.g., race, socioeconomic position) impact mental health. Overall, this review points to gender as a meaningful social construct that is relevant for understanding young people's internalizing symptoms during the pandemic. We call attention to the structural factors underlying gender disparities and the need for intersectionality-informed approaches to work towards mental health equity.

Leveraging Neuroscience to Inform Adolescent Health: The Need for an Innovative Transdisciplinary Developmental Science of Adolescence.

In this article, we consider how to leverage some of the rapid advances in developmental neuroscience in ways that can improve adolescent health. We provide a brief overview of several key areas of scientific progress relevant to these issues. We then focus on two examples of important health problems that increase sharply during adolescence: sleep problems and affective disorders. These examples illustrate how an integrative, developmental science approach provides new insights into treatment and intervention. They also highlight a cornerstone principle: how a deeper understanding of potentially modifiable factors-at key developmental inflection points along the trajectory toward clinical disorders-is beginning to inform, and may eventually transform, a broad range of innovative early intervention strategies to improve adolescent health.

Becoming a sexual being: The 'elephant in the room' of adolescent brain development.

The onset of adolescence is a time of profound changes in motivation, cognition, behavior, and social relationships. Existing neurodevelopmental models have integrated our current understanding of adolescent brain development; however, there has been surprisingly little focus on the importance of adolescence as a sensitive period for romantic and sexual development. As young people enter adolescence, one of their primary tasks is to gain knowledge and experience that will allow them to take on the social roles of adults, including engaging in romantic and sexual relationships. By reviewing the relevant human and animal neurodevelopmental literature, this paper highlights how we should move beyond thinking of puberty as simply a set of somatic changes that are critical for physical reproductive maturation. Rather, puberty also involves a set of neurobiological changes that are critical for the social, emotional, and cognitive maturation necessary for reproductive success. The primary goal of this paper is to broaden the research base and dialogue about adolescent romantic and sexual development, in hopes of advancing understanding of sex and romance as important developmental dimensions of health and well-being in adolescence.

Research in the Integration of Behavioral Health for Adolescents and Young Adults in Primary Care Settings: A Systematic Review.

Despite the recognition that behavioral and medical health conditions are frequently intertwined, the existing health care system divides management for these issues into separate settings. This separation results in increased barriers to receipt of care and contributes to problems of underdetection, inappropriate diagnosis, and lack of treatment engagement. Adolescents and young adults with mental health conditions have some of the lowest rates of treatment for their conditions of all age groups. Integration of behavioral health into primary care settings has the potential to address these barriers and improve outcomes for adolescents and young adults. In this paper, we review the current research literature for behavioral health integration in the adolescent and young adult population and make recommendations for needed research to move the field forward.

Dissociable effects of age and testosterone on adolescent impatience.

The onset of adolescence is associated with an increase in transgressive behaviours-from juvenile delinquency to substance use and unprotected sex-that are often attributed to increased impulsiveness. In the past, this increase was ascribed to "raging hormones"; more recently, to an imbalance in the maturation of different brain regions. However, it remains unclear how these large-scale biological changes impact specific processes that result in impulsive decisions, namely, sensitivity to immediate rewards and general discounting of future options. To gain further insight into these questions, we used an intertemporal choice task to investigate the role of testosterone in impatient decision-making in boys at the developmental transition to adolescence (N=72, ages 11-14). Our results suggest that increased testosterone (but not age) is related to increased sensitivity to immediate rewards, whereas increased age (but not testosterone) is related to a reduction in general impatience. These results are discussed in the context of recent neurobiological models of adolescent development.

Motivations for sex among low-income African American young women.

African American young women exhibit higher risk for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS, compared with European American women, and this is particularly true for African American women living in low-income contexts. We used rigorous qualitative methods, that is, domain analysis, including free listing (n = 20), similarity assessment (n = 25), and focus groups (four groups), to elicit self-described motivations for sex among low-income African American young women (19-22 years). Analyses revealed six clusters: Love/Feelings, For Fun, Curiosity, Pressured, For Money, and For Material Things. Focus groups explored how African American women interpreted the clusters in light of condom use expectations. Participants expressed the importance of using condoms in risky situations, yet endorsed condom use during casual sexual encounters less than half the time. This study highlights the need for more effective intervention strategies to increase condom use expectations among low-income African American women, particularly in casual relationships where perceived risk is already high.