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Abstract: Adolescence is a complex stage of development spanning the gap between childhood and adulthood. It starts with the biological changes of puberty and ends with full maturity but its timing, length and experience is highly culture dependent. In most Western societies, adolescence has become a stage spanning several years leading to independence from the family of origin and is characterized by physical growth, sexual, cognitive and social development. This review highlights the key developmental tasks of adolescence and examines some of the influences within education, the peer group and family influencing healthy outcomes. How young people negotiate their teenage years is highly influential in determining adult adjustment and an understanding of this developmental stage is crucial to the understanding of many adult mental health problems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Background: Although weight and shape concerns are considered to be integral to the psychopathology of anorexia and bulimia nervosa, uncertainties remain about developmental aspects of the aetiology of these concerns and their relationship to eating disorders.Aims: To review the recent literature on weight and shape concern, with particular emphasis on aetiology, to identify a possible developmental pathway from weight concern through abnormal eating behaviour to disorder.Method: Literature review of Medline and Psychlit databases using the keywords 'eating disorder', 'weight concern', 'shape concern' and 'aetiology'. Inclusion criteria were based on the strength of quantitative research findings, originality of ideas and recent publication.Results: Weight and shape concerns follow a developmental pathway arising before the typical age for the development of eating disorders. The origins are multifactorial, with biological, family and sociocultural features predominating.Conclusions: Although weight and shape concern seems commonly to underlie the development of eating disorders, an alternative pathway appears to exist through impulsivity and fear of loss of control. Prevention strategies may usefully focus on the attitudes and concerns that lead to dieting behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on a study which examined the Eating Disorders Inventory ratings and differences in self-reported cognitions and clinical outcome between adolescent cases of anorexia nervosa (AN) with and without comorbid depression. Details on the psychopathological features of AN; Methodology; Results and discussions.

We describe the design of a random allocation prospective treatment study comparing three modalities of care and a nontreatment control. Problems encountered in the execution of this study are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies of height in patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) are presented. The first used the measured heights of 338 patients seen by a specialist AN service. The second examined the self-reported heights of 309 subjects with probably AN from data collected on the members of a self-help organization for suffers from eating disorders. In both studies comparisons were made within the samples and to general population samples (with allowances for sex, age, and social class). In neither study was any patient sample significantly shorter than its control sample. However, both studies found relative tallness in anorectic subjects who had made at least some recovery from their illnesses. Three hypotheses are proposed to explain this finding. One proposes that a propensity to tallness predisposes to AN. This propensity may sometimes have become one source of the personal sensitivity about growth and appearance within adolescence, promoting the characteristic dietary restriction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a prospective study of the development of eating symptomatology, adolescent girls completed measures of eating attitudes and self-esteem. At two-year follow-up, the predictive validity of those measures was tested. Abnormal eating attitudes at baseline predicted both unhealthy eating attitudes and partial syndrome eating disorder (PSED) at follow-up. Poor self-esteem at baseline predicted unhealthy eating attitudes, but was not significantly associated with PSED. The results suggest that measures of both eating attitudes and sell-esteem have potential value as screening instruments for subsequent eating problems, assisting in targeting intervention at an early stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ninety patients with severe anorexia nervosa fulfilling DSM-III-R criteria were assessed in depth in terms of their family developmental psychopathology and then randomly allocated to either one of three treatment groups or to no treatment. In three treatment regimes, a behavioural approach to diet and weight gain was coupled with individual and family psychotherapy directed at the adolescent maturational problems. All three treatment regimes were highly significantly effective at one year in terms of weight gain, return of menstruation, and aspects of social and sexual adjustment. Body weights above those at pubertal onset were achieved for the group mean maximum and one-year follow-up weights for all three treatment groups but not the control group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]