Assessing alcohol‐involved adolescents: Toward a developmentally‐relevant diagnostic taxonomy

Abstract

Although recent assessment and diagnostic advancements have been made to better reflect the developmental uniqueness of alcohol‐involved adolescents, there remains lacking a comprehensive taxonomy to describe the diversity of this large and often at‐risk population. This paper presents a taxonomy comprising five typologies of adolescent drinkers based on a continuum of use severity. Each typology is described in terms of alcohol consumption variables, salient risk factors for alcohol problems, and problem symptoms. We argue that the taxonomy provides a useful heuristic for clinicians conducting assessment or screening with alcohol‐involved adolescents, and we offer conceptual improvements for making the DSM‐IV Alcohol Use Disorder criteria more developmentally relevant to adolescents. Implications for matching typologies to service levels are discussed.

• Adolescent
• alcohol use
• taxonomy

Acknowledgements

This paper was supported in part by grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA03510 and U10‐AA08401). We thank Dr Pamela Bean for her helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.