Frequent bouts of school and adolescent violence have left confusion and questions about today’s teenagers and their role in society.Ronald Werner-Wilson, assistant professor of human development and family studies, hopes to answer some of those questions in his book, which was published last January. The book looks at adolescents and how they deal with anxiety, depression and suicide.”Development-Systemic Family Therapy with Adolescents” focuses on a new family therapy model Werner-Wilson researched, called developmental-systemic therapy. The model focuses on adolescent development and how professional therapists can respond to adolescents and their problems appropriately. “Too often we forget adolescents are different than adults,” Werner-Wilson said. “We make the error of treating them as mini-adults and expecting them to act just like us.”In addition to directing the ISU Marriage and Family Therapy Clinic, Werner-Wilson also teaches graduate classes at Iowa State about training therapists. He said his primary goal for the book is to help professionals understand adolescents.”The main purpose of the book is to help professionals who will work with adolescents to understand adolescent development, family relationships and their influences on adolescent behavior,” he said.Werner-Wilson said he received the contract for his book in October 1995 and started researching immediately.”This book is a good five years of pretty intense work,” he said. Werner-Wilson said he used clinical research he conducted and other published library research to write the book. In addition to explaining the new therapy, Werner-Wilson also hopes to help parents with his research. “I want parents to understand how complicated adolescents are in terms of self-esteem and development,” he said.Darren Wozny and Rob Marrs, graduate students in marriage and family therapy, collaborated with Werner-Wilson to research and write his book. Wozny said he wrote a chapter on suicide and how to interact with adolescents when that happens. “A lot of people think when adolescents are talking about suicide, they are trying to get attention by being manipulative, but it’s more a cry for help,” he said.