Youth Mental Health Matters
We're for the developing brain -- our world's most valuable natural resourceWelcome.
Simply put, this website offers information about child and adolescent mental health — particularly as it relates to substance use and addiction.
Contributors to DrThurstone.com are big believers in evidence-based medicine that has practical, real-world applications — meaning science that has been subjected to the rigorous review of reputable scholars and can be used at home and throughout a community.
We do not have all the answers — but we are confident the information you find here is trustworthy enough to guide your search for them responsibly.
— Dr. Christian Thurstone, M.D.
Chair of Behavioral Health at Denver Health and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado
Featured
Treating the youth Fentanyl epidemic with MAT
Medication-Assisted Treatment, or MAT, is an increasingly important tool for addressing addiction to opiates, including powerfully potent Fentanyl, the chief driver of a significant spike in drug-overdose deaths in the United States in recent years. Consider the...
Dr. Christian Thurstone speaks on dangers of teen vaping with Fox 31
The United States Food and Drug Administration on June 23, 2022, issued marketing denial orders to JUUL Labs Inc., for all of their products currently marketed in the United States, effectively banning the maker of e-cigarette devices and other vaping products from...
Thurstone named recipient of Meritorious Service Medal
U.S. Army LTC Christian Thurstone is the recipient of The Meritorious Service Medal. To All who shall see these presents, greeting: This is to certify that the President of the United States of America authorized by Executive Order, 16 January 1969 has awarded The...
Colorado House approves regulation of THC concentrate
Colorado House lawmakers today approved a bill to regulate concentrated THC, the active ingredient of the cannabis plant strongly associated with development of psychosis and several other mental health problems. The bipartisan effort, led by Democratic Rep. Yadira...
Thurstone speaks with The Economist about overdose deaths
The headline above the May 15 report in The Economist gets straight to the point: "Last year, more people in San Francisco died of overdoses than COVID-19." As reported: "While covid-19 rampaged across the country, America’s other epidemic has quietly boiled over....
Prevention and Treatment for Families
Help and hope for families wanting to avoid and address problems associated with substance use and addiction.
Parents don’t have to accept youth substance use
These are common questions: If so many teens are using addictive substances such as alcohol, tobacco and marijuana, what's the big deal? Isn't it normal to experiment like this? After all, teens will be teens -- and a lot of parents had their own flings with smokes...
American psychiatric society review: Clearing the Haze ‘commendable effort’
The May 2017 edition of the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry includes a review of our book, "Clearing the Haze: Helping Families Face Teen Addiction." Dr. Christopher Hammond calls it "parent-friendly" and writes: "Thurstone and Tatum...
Helping families face teen addiction
Every week, parents looking for help with issues and problems related to substance use contact us through this website -- so my wife, journalist Christine Tatum, and I have written a book designed to help them act quickly, efficiently and effectively to care for their...
Get the impACT diagnostic manual
This is the first adaptation of Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) for adolescent substance treatment. The manual is a general guide for treatment using Motivational Interviewing (MI) and Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) principles.
Animal- assisted therapy for impACT
The use of animal-assisted therapy will promote comfort, accelerate rapport-building, encourage trust, elevate mood, reinforce activities of daily living (ADLs), increase interpersonal contact, encourage communication and encourage self-care.
Read the book
Clearing the Haze is a guide designed to help parents determine whether their child may have a substance problem and, if so, how to begin to address it. This book includes the voices and insight of experts in substance abuse counseling, young people in recovery, and parents who have lived the nightmare of adolescent addiction.
Hot Topics, Great Resources
Marijuana
Opiates
Brain Development
Find a Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist
Remember: Adolescent mental health extends to age 25. A great way to find a physician who understands the unique mental health needs of children and adolescents is searching the online member directory of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.