Volume 27 of Adolescent Psychiatry focuses on trauma and violence among adolescents, and attends especially to the psychological, biological, and social impact of trauma on its victims, especially the young. Schonfeld Award papers offer a historical perspective on adolescent violence in America, and examine terrorism by looking at the appeal of ideologies that espouse violent revolution to young people. Christopher Thomas and his colleagues, drawing on their groundbreaking work on youth violence in Galveston, Texas, add a study that links gang members with serious violent crime....

The ASAP's longstanding advocacy of troubled adolescents gains expression in Volume 28 of Adolescent Psychiatry, which focuses on the juvenile justice system and other dimensions of adolescents and the law. A special section on the forensic and legal aspects of adolescent psychiatry traverses the competence of adolescents to consent to treatment; the "voluntary" hospitalization of adolescents; the utility of residential treatment programs in the management of juvenile delinquency; and Richard Ratner's Schonfeld Lecture, "Juvenile Justice?" The special demands on psychiatric providers...

A special section on adolescent substance abuse highlights Volume 29 of Adolescent Psychiatry. Contributions range from an examination of brain myelination in relation to onset of addictive disorders (Bartzokis) to the screening instruments used to detect substance use disorders (Rosner) to practical aspects of psychiatric assessment and management of substance abusing adolescents (Havivi). Topical studies focus on the changing patterns of use and health risks of the "designer drug" Ecstasy (Grob); the club drugs gamma-hydroxybutyrate and ketamine (Miotto et al.); and adolescent...