An exciting new approach to caring for individuals with intellectual disabilities, this book provides a new theoretical perspective on treatment along with a variety of innovative tools. It rejects reducing adults with intellectual disabilities to a mere compilation of their behaviors and instead nurtures each individual’s sense of identity. Allowing psychologists, social workers, and therapists to utilize the tools presented to enhance the effectiveness of the treatment they currently provide, this handbook promotes well-being on every level.

This handbook examines positive youth development (PYD) in youth and emerging adults from an international perspective. It focuses on large and underrepresented cultural groups across six continents within a strengths-based conception of adolescence that considers all youth as having assets. The volume explores the ways in which developmental assets, when effectively harnessed, empower youth to transition into a productive and resourceful adulthood. The book focuses on PYD across vast geographical regions, including Europe, Asia, Africa, Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, North America, and Latin America as well as on strengths and resources for optimal well-being. The handbook addresses the positive development of young people across various cultural contexts to advance research, policy, and practice and inform interventions that foster continued thriving and reduce the chances of compromised youth development. It presents theoretical perspectives and supporting empirical findings to promote a more comprehensive understanding of PYD from an integrated, multidisciplinary, and multinational perspective.

Identity is defined in many different ways in various disciplines in the social sciences and sub-disciplines within psychology. The developmental psychological approach to identity is characterized by a focus on developing a sense of the self that is temporally continuous and unified across the different life spaces that individuals inhabit. Erikson proposed that the task of adolescence and young adulthood was to define the self by answering the question: Who Am I? There have been many advances in theory and research on identity development since Erikson's writing over fifty years ago, and the time has come to consolidate our knowledge and set an agenda for future research. The Oxford Handbook of Identity Development represents a turning point in the field of identity development research. Various, and disparate, groups of researchers are brought together to debate, extend, and apply Erikson's theory to contemporary problems and empirical issues. The result is a comprehensive and state-of-the-art examination of identity development that pushes the field in provocative new directions. Scholars of identity development, adolescent and adult development, and related fields, as well as graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and practitioners will find this to be an innovative, unique, and exciting look at identity development.