Premature adolescence: Neuroendocrine and psychosocial studies

This chapter describes the results of LHRH analog administration to children with true precocious puberty. In addition, it reviews some preliminary psychological findings in girls with precocious puberty using the child behavior checklist to assess behavior problems and social competence. Conventional therapy of true precocious puberty has been limited to the progestational agents, such as medroxyprogesterone acetate, to suppress gonadal secretion, or the use of the antiandrogen, cyproterone acetate, to antagonize the effects of sex steroids. The stresses that impinge upon these children and their families can be conceptualized as progressing from the generic to the specific. Repeated hospitalizations, absence from school, the cost of medical treatment, and the intrafamilial restructuring that often occurs in chronic illness have a generic quality that cuts across the specific illness. Additional observational self-report measures in other settings and with nonexperimental populations will be needed to ascertain the factors responsible for the problems experienced by many of these children.