ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a sense of the different ways in which adolescents get into difficulties, whether with eating disorders or with depression and a wish to end their lives. Some young people are struggling with adolescence in the context of handicap. The book describes how Lynda Miller tries to address the very same issues with adolescents in ways that make sense of how they feel about themselves in the world. It looks at a very fundamental problem of establishing a work identity, which is so important and yet so difficult in the modern world where the future is so uncertain with its unemployment, part-time and short-term jobs which require so much more inner security to cope with. The book explores what it is like for many adolescents who are having to achieve adulthood in the tight circumstances of today's small, often lone parent families.
