Teenage brain development

Dame Sue Bagshaw discusses teenage brain development and its influences - what this means for the GP - and how to optimise your communication to maximise your consult with the teenage patient.

Topics

What’s going on in the teenage brain
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How brain development should influence our consultations.
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When is brain development complete.
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Prenatal influences on the teenage brain
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Mood and emotional dysregulation
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Sleep patterns
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Screen use
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Risk taking/reward seeking
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Food and the brain
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Substance use
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Privacy
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Take-home messages
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Take home messages

Listen to where you patients are in terms of their development.
Make your consults a conversation.
Help them to know that you’re really interested in them.

Resources

Maturation of the adolescent brain Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat. (2013)
Adolescent Brain Development KidsHealth (2021)
Inside the teenage brain: What changes and how to cope Stuff (2021)
Adolescent Consultation and the HEeADSSS Assessment Starship guidelines (2109)

Patient Resources

Presenter

Sue Bagshaw

Primary Care Doctor and Senior Lecturer

Dame Sue Bagshaw works as a primary care doctor specialising in adolescent/youth health at a one-stop community youth health centre for 10-25-year-olds, which she helped to set up. She is a senior lecturer in adolescent health in the Department of Paediatrics at the Christchurch School of Medicine. She spent 20 years working for the Family Planning Association in Christchurch and ten years working part-time on the Methadone programme in Christchurch: which is why she has interests in common with young people – sex, drugs and rock 'n roll!