The Past, Future, and Present of Childhood and Adolescent Mental Health

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In this first issue of "Focus on Childhood and Adolescent Mental Health," we focus on 3 studies that exemplify different strategies for advancing and informing the field of childhood and adolescent mental health. One method for validating that a mental health disorder begins during youth is to examine adults with that disorder and retrospectively assess age at onset and associate risk factors for illness development. In the first article, Post and Kowatch use retrospective assessments of adults with bipolar disorder to determine that the onset of bipolar disorder most commonly occurs during childhood and adolescence.’ ‹