Communicating with adolescents who have behavior problems

Any clinician providing health care to adolescents needs to be able to communicate with them about behavior problems. For reasons relating both to adolescents and to health care providers, such communication is often challenging and sometimes frustrating. Nevertheless, one can develop a method of communicating with adolescents about their problems that will provide information that can be used therapeutically and will make the practice of adolescent medicine more rewarding for the professional. Numerous skills and techniques have been presented that enable the practitioner to initiate, facilitate, and encourage effective communication. These include both verbal and nonverbal methods. Methods for maintaining communication also have been discussed, since there are numerous ways in which communication with adolescents can go awry once it is established. Many health care providers already have developed other individualized skills and techniques; they are encouraged to consider adding those presented in this article. However, communication skills and techniques are useless unless they are based on an interest in the patient. As Peabody wrote almost 6 decades ago: "The secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient."