Episode 13: Adolescent Medicine 101: What Parents and Clinicians Need to Know with Dr. Risa Fridy (Part 1)

Yeah.

And I think that's so important because There are so many clients or just adolescents, I think that parents or therapists, maybe they're not aware of questions to ask, right, related to psychiatric well-being or especially to eating disorders, especially in this culture of look-smacking.

I'm really thinking about the boys that... you know, I really feel there needs to be a specialist and almost a better list available to parents and or practitioners, maybe even the pediatrician of like, what do I ask and look for, you know, to see is this individual struggling with body image and how is this affecting them? Or even perhaps are they, um, know constipated and it's not about increasing fiber it's really because the kid is so strung out right from the stress of the culture or for looking a certain way and therefore they are you know super tense in their physical body and maybe actually need to be referred for pelvic floor therapy rather than increase their fiber right so it's like there's so many nuances so i do think the specialty is so necessary.

And I wish more individuals were aware of seeing an adolescent specialist.

And again, it depends on the kid.

I actually have one kid that sees an adolescent specialist, right? And then I have one kid that doesn't, that sees the regular pediatrician.

And any...

Any advice for parents on how to identify if you need an adolescent specialist or maybe what would be helpful in identifying, you know, for them if their child would benefit from seeing someone, like just switch over from like at what age from a pediatrician to the adolescent medicine person and, you know, how it could potentially be beneficial for that individual or maybe the family.

I

was going to say like the age range that you're typically working with and seeing and like what falls under the purview of like adolescent medicine.

absolutely it's a great question okay so so first just to answer the age range um it i wouldn't say so i'm in private practice um which is definitely a little bit different because we have a little less rules to follow than a hospital-based practice but in general adolescent medicine tends to start with the pre-teen age and you could call that even 10. um i would say puberty tends to be like early signs of puberty tends to be a Sign that maybe we're ready.

And then true adolescent medicine, the subspecialty in most hospital-based practices goes up to either 21 or 25.

It sort of differs a lot of times in the hospital.

And I joke because my practice specifically is called Tribeca adolescent and young adult medicine because... just because someone suddenly magically turns 21 or 25 does not mean that their brain matures to the way that they stop engaging in risk-taking behaviors or that their puberty happens to be fully finished or whatever it may be.

And so my age has pushed up and up over the years that my practice has been open.

And originally I capped at 30, so I saw patients all through their 20s.

And then I inched it up to 35 when my patients were getting older.

And now I actually will take patients up through 40.

Typically the patients that I'm seeing are really in that young adult profile of risk-taking behaviors or have active eating disorders.

unfortunately the care that specializes in a lot of what I do in the internal medicine world adult world is very difficult to come by so it's not just that the pediatricians are limited the internists are limited too so the my practice model and the age group that I serve and the issues specifically that I work on are very specific to my patients where the ages themselves are a little more flexible