Adolescent Health & Development - General Practice: The Integrative Approach Series. The essence of good adolescent healthcare consists of:

• understanding adolescent development
• recognising the intimate relationship between development, health and behaviour at this time of life
• encouraging self-responsibility and self-care using a resiliency-based approach
• providing a friendly and accessible service.

Adolescent health falls outside biological paradigms, clinical medicine and its usual classifications, and outside the classic distinctions between physical and mental health, between medical and social aspects of health, and between curative and preventive care. Adolescent healthcare is a bio-psychosocial field, one which, by its very nature, requires an integrative approach.