“It is essential to recognize adolescent medicine as a specialty in its own right.”

The various stakeholders involved in the health of young people tend to focus solely on their psychological distress, especially if it results in risky behaviors: suicide attempts, drug use, eating disorders, risky sexual behavior, sleep disorders, etc. However, suffering and anxiety are expressed by and on the body through actions, sometimes complex actions that replace impossible words. Can we really conceive of the efficiency of care for adolescence if we excessively avoid the role of the body?

Adolescent medicine, a discipline still in full development in France, defines itself as a clinic of change. While this change occurs on several levels—biological, psychological, and social—our Western culture places psychological reorganizations at the forefront. The collective imagination thus shapes the " adolescent crisis ," an often fluid process that orchestrates transformations of the body, thought, and relationships with others.

This care of the individual in transformation cannot be seen simply as a juxtaposition of medical and psychiatric specialties, because adolescence is not a gradual and compartmentalized reorganization of the physical and psychological dimensions of the person. It can only be thought of as a global dynamic requiring coordination of professionals adapted and targeted to the adolescent.

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