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The Aspen Institute for Behavioral Assessment

The mission of The Aspen Institute for Behavioral Assessment is to provide psychiatric stabilization, comprehensive evaluation, assessment, treatment, and integrated prescriptive services for adolescents found eligible for treatment. The Aspen Institute for Behavioral Assessment provides comprehensive assessment services, crisis stabilization, early intensive treatment, and integrated, comprehensive prescriptive evaluations that chart the course for troubled teens to get back on track.

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Brain Developmental Changes Cause Teenage Anger and Angst

New research from Australia reveals that teens that get into fights may have significantly different brain structures than their more mellow peers.

Dr. Nicholas Allen of the University of Melbourne and his colleagues performed brain scans on 137 teenagers and then videotaped them interacting with their parents. The teens that got into fights with their parents tended to have overly developed structures in their brains that involved emotional responses.

"What we found was there was actually a relationship between the size and the structure of the various parts of the brain and the way kids behave in these interactions," Dr. Allen said. "Their emotions are developing much faster than the parts of the brain that help them manage these emotions."

Dr. Allen said little is known about how the environment affects brain development in teenagers. One study showed that girls who grow up in stressful homes go through early puberty. "We're not sure if the environment is affecting the biology or if the biology is affecting the environment," Dr. Allen explained.

Dr. Allen's study was published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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