Emotional upheaval is part of adolescence. But depression and thoughts of death pose a serious threat to teens, for whom suicide is the third leading cause of death. How can a friend, teacher, or coach help a despairing teen? The Yellow Ribbon program offers a starting place. Lee Nelson reports.

Some parents divorce. Some lose their jobs. Others fall ill, struggle with alcoholism or drug addiction. Some even die. But their children need to keep on with their lives, and that means going to school. How prepared are teachers to deal respectfully with children struggling with loss? Rob Capriccioso shares his view on the need to educate the educators.

With the second anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks upon us, the memories of that day and subsequent events continue to exert their power. Connect for Kids former Editor Susan Phillips believes we have a long way to go to recognize the depth of that power, especially for our children.

In 1999, 19 percent of high school students reported seriously considering suicide in the past year. A new Pediatrics study notes that counseling services, which are vital, are available to fewer than one-third of suicidal teens. Those who had made a suicide attempt were almost twice as likely to receive access to counseling as those who had only considered suicide.

Youth who engage in delinquent behaviors early are more likely to become serious, chronic and violent offenders in adolescence -- but interventions are more likely to succeed with younger youth, according to this Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention report, Child Delinquency: Early Intervention and Prevention.

One of the contentious issues in the IDEA reauthorization is whether school discipline policies and practices should take disability into account. According to the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, schools can successfully address the reasons behind problem behavior of students with disabilities, as required by the current federal special education law, in ways that lead to "fewer behavior problems and an atmosphere of learning instead of constant power struggles."

Concluding there is no way to predict which individual students will commit lethal attacks in schools, this National Research Council review says profiling would wrongly identify harmless adolescents as potentially dangerous and it would miss some of the few youths who actually commit the offenses. Prevention efforts should focus on keeping firearms out of the hands of unsupervised adolescents and out of schools.

The President's Commission on Mental Health found that the mental health care system is more complex and inadequate for children than for adults, and that families don't know where to turn. The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law reports that these concerns were apparent in focus groups, where parents described difficulties and frustrations in getting proper care for their mentally ill children.

Losing loved ones is hard on kids, and the road to healing can offer lots of detours. At Camp El Tesoro de la Vida in Texas, kids who have lost parents, siblings or friends gather for a summer of fun in a supportive environment.

There’s a question that haunts many children who are victims of sexual abuse: why me? It holds echoes of feeling alone, singled out, and somehow to blame. Andrea Grazzini Walstrom explains how Wisconsin teenager Katie Jadin has created a new resource for helping children dealing with the effects of abuse.