Essay On Adolescent Development

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According to Pittman and Cahill (1992,32) ,positive youth development is: " the ongoing process in which all young people are engaged in meeting their physical, personal, and social needs and in building a set of skills and competencies that seem useful in their present lives and in the future". According to the WHO website, adolescence is a stage in life that takes place between the ages of 10-19, in which there are both physical and psychological changes. In my essay I will be discussing some psychological issues that may come up in an adolescents development and how it may or may not affect their psychological health and well-being. The issues that i will be discussing are; Mental Health, Relationships and finally Sexuality.
According to the Psychology Today website, adolescents go through a period of disorientation and discovery. During this time adolescents can be very vulnerable to many different thing and this can lead to some mental health issues. One of these issues is how the adolescent identifies themselves. In the book " Developing Adolescents: a reference for professionals" (2002) it is state that there are two steps to identity. The first step is self concept and this refers to the traits that the adolescent think that they have e.g. height, intelligence, athletic ability. The second step is self-esteem, this is how the adolescent sees themselves. This could also be referred to as the concept of "possible selves" (Markus and Nurius,1986), which is basically how the adolescent sees themselves now and how they hope to see themselves in the future.
In the study " Young People's Views of their Present and Future Selves in two deprived communities" (Kloep, Hendry, Gardener, & Seage, 2010) they looked at the con...

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...n lead to issues such as anorexia, bulimia and depression. Many perfectly shaped teenagers try to lose weight going to the extreme by either throwing up after eating or not eating at all.
Bulimia, involves teens forcing themselves to throw up, is a serious health problem which can result in heart failure. Bulimia also is one of the main mental health problems among teens. Another unhealthy option they resort to in order to lose weight is to become anorexic. Anorexia is an eating disorder in which one chooses to not eat any food at all. This can lead to teens having a lack of energy and serious health problems. Overall, the media leads teens into having self-esteem issues that will end up in a dangerous lifestyle. Overtime, teens will become so into following what the media says that they lose part of who they are in hopes of becoming someone that doesn’t even exist.

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