And teens soon can be on the road to recovery. But a surge in brain research in the 1990s helped focus society on how the 3-pound wonder affects behavior. Researchers then also discovered little work had been done on childhood and adolescent mental illnesses. So the National Institutes of Health vowed to increase research in child and adolescent brain disorders. A boom in adolescent and child psychiatry began.
Experts say adolescence is a time of risk-taking.
But there's a limit. Normal adolescents do not engage in excessive alcohol or drug use. Normal adolescents do not have problems with the law. Normal adolescents do not have significant behavioral problems at school. Cottingham, one of just 6,000 licensed child and adolescent psychiatrists in the nation, said parents often don't want to see mental illness in their children, so they ignore truly erratic behavior.