This website includes up-to-date information on major aspects of adolescent health, including physical and mental health, substance abuse, sexual behavior, pregnancy prevention, and healthy relationships. The website provides both new information and existing federal resources geared to meet the adolescent health information needs of diverse stakeholders.
Why do youth abuse alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs? How can you tell when a young person is using, and how should you respond? What if a student tells you that someone else is using drugs? This hands-on resource provides an overview of the substances kids are most likely to use (including over-the-counter drugs and increasingly popular inhalants), concise descriptions of effects and warning signs, and a guide to working with youth, parents, the school, social workers, and law enforcement. Comprehensive, realistic, and optimistic, it follows the entire cycle of substance abuse, from experimentation to recovery.
In the past decade, policymakers and researchers have become increasingly interested in social programs that promote and support healthy marriages. A growing body of research evidence suggests that marriage has benefits for families and children, including improved economic well-being and mental health, and that children raised in two-parent families perform better in school and have more positive developmental outcomes than children from single-parent families (Amato and Booth 1997; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994; Waite and Gallagher2000; Wood et al. 2007). Inspired in part by these potential benefits of marriage, a wide range of programs have been developed to encourage and support healthy marriages (Dion 2005).
