Patricia K. Kerig

With the publication of the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), and the recent release of the draft diagnostic criteria to be used in the forthcoming International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), students, researchers, and clinicians are in need of an authoritative and practical guide to understanding the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in childhood and adolescence. This is particularly the case given that, other than designating a separate diagnosis with a smaller number of symptoms for preschoolers, these new diagnostic compendia provide little information regarding developmental differences in the onset, expression, and course of the disorder. Child and adolescent mental health professionals—whether they are students in training, practitioners, or scientists—will benefit from this book's summaries of the available research on PTSD in young persons, descriptions of how the expression and consequences of PTSD might change across developmental periods, and suggested strategies for differential diagnosis between PTSD and other disruptive behavioral and emotional disorders that present with overlapping symptoms across childhood and adolescence. The author also discusses cutting-edge issues, such as the constructs of posttraumatic growth and resilience, and summarizes the evidence base for treatments focused on alleviating PTSD in young persons through interventions targeting the individual youth, the family, and their larger ecological contexts.

Child maltreatment has enormous costs, both at the individual and the societal level. While we are better equipped than ever to help maltreated children, fundamental questions remain. How does normal development go awry in these children? Why are some children more affected than others? And how can concerned professionals best help these children and their families? This book explains the science of developmental psychopathology for clinicians and other professionals who work with at-risk children. The authors focus particularly on how maltreatment differentially affects children at key stages of their lives, from infancy to early adulthood. Armed with this understanding, clinicians can be aware of age-specific vulnerabilities and better tailor their interventions.

While the period of transition from adolescence to adulthood has become a recent focus for developmental psychologists and child mental health practitioners, the full role of the family during this period is only beginning to be explored. Many compelling questions, of interest to anyone involved in adolescence research, remain unanswered. To what extent do family experiences influence the way one navigates through emerging adulthood? How do we begin to understand the interplay between adolescents' contexts and their development and well-being? Adolescence and Beyond: Family Processes and Development offers an accessible synthesis of research, theories, and perspectives on the family processes that contribute to development. Chapters from expert researchers cover a wide variety of topics surrounding the link between family processes and individual development, including adolescent romantic relationships, emotion regulation, resilience in contexts of risk, and socio-cultural and ethnic influences on development. Drawing on diverse research and methodological approaches that include direct family observations, interviews, and narrative analyses, this volume presents cutting-edge conceptual and empirical work on the key developmental tasks and challenges in the transition between adolescence and adulthood. Researchers, practitioners, and students in social, developmental, and clinical psychology--as well as those in social work, psychiatry, and pediatrics--will find this book an invaluable summary of important research on the link between family process and individual development.