Feeling states during adolescence.

Adolescence is characterized by a wide variety of feeling states with certain stages in adolescence being associated with particularly strong affects, a result of the normative developmental process. Affective psychopathology during the adolescent years, particularly in the disorders of depression and mania/hypomania, is characterized by abnormalities in the quality and quantity of affective patterns and additionally by the appearance of feeling states, which may be historically uncharacteristic for the teen (i.e., out of keeping with his previous longitudinal pattern of personality development). Clinicians faced with assessing disturbances in feeling states during the adolescent years must carefully distinguish fluctuating developmental problems from clinical syndromes. A longitudinal assessment period is usually necessary before this distinction can be made with some certainty. The prescription of treatment, be it psychologic, biologic, or systems based, should await the completion of a careful clinical assessment prior to its institution.